What Is Product Positioning? Definition and Template

Product positioning is a marketing strategy that influences how consumers view products. Learn how to position products and download a free template in this guide.

When shoppers understand how your product solves their problem—and why it’s the best choice—they’re far more likely to trust you and buy. It’s your job to make this process easy and quick.

In fact, Salsify’s 2025 Consumer Research report found 87% of customers will pay more for products from brands they trust. 

In this guide, you’ll learn how to craft a positioning statement that acts as an internal compass, test it with real customers, and apply Shopify templates to stake out (and defend) your place in the market.

What is product positioning?

Product positioning is choosing the single standout reason shoppers should pick your product over any alternative—and repeating that reason at every touchpoint. Marketers uncover effective positioning through consumer research, competitor analysis, and zeroing in on the problem the product solves best, resulting in a message customers can grasp instantly.

Positioning shapes everything downstream—feature priorities, the product roadmap, messaging, channel mix, and even pricing architecture. When the position is right, you stay on the shelf, win repeat customers, and move faster toward product-market fit. 

Get it wrong, however, and you risk joining the 25% of new FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods)products Euromonitor found vanish from digital marketplaces within two years because shoppers never saw a clear reason to choose them.

Product positioning statement

A product positioning statement spells out your product’s unique value for a defined target audience. It distills three fundamentals into a portable story: the audience you serve, the benefit they value most, and the proof your product delivers that benefit better than any alternative.

Because the statement is brief and explicit, teams across marketing, sales, and product can use it as a daily reference, keeping all messages—and every step on the roadmap—pointed in the same direction.

Product vs. brand vs. market positioning

Positioning is a key concept across your business, not just for individual products. Here’s how brand and market position differ from product positioning:

Brand positioning

In marketing, brand positioning stakes out the territory your entire company wants to own in the market. Instead of zooming in on one product, it clarifies what your brand stands for—its values, personality, and promise—and how those qualities set you apart from competitors.

Another way of understanding brand position is to consider what consumers associate with your business. For instance, when you think of Tesla, you might associate it with innovation and sustainability. Or Nike with accessible performance. For instance:

• Apple positions itself as the world leader in user experience
• McDonald’s is synonymous with affordable, fast, and satisfying meals
• Red Bull’s brand says adventure, excitement, and energy
• Rolex is positioned to communicate prestige and exclusivity

💡 Brand positioning focuses on a business’s strengths and ignores its flaws. The high price point of Apple devices and the questionable nutritional value of McDonald’s recipes aren’t addressed by the brand positioning statement.

Market positioning

Market positioning zooms even farther out from individual products and the brand story to ask a bigger question: Where should the business play in the competitive landscape as a whole? It studies the gaps and pressures across the industry, revealing which segments are crowded, which are underserved, and what role your company can credibly fill.

With that bird’s-eye view, leadership can make high-stakes calls: —what product lines to launch, how to structure pricing tiers, when to acquire or partner with other players, and which sales channels to use to put the offer in front of the right customers.

The business impact of effective positioning

Correctly positioning your brand and its products drives business growth, especially when supported by proven growth strategies. On the other hand, when product-level positioning is unclear, sales slip. Salsify’s 2025 Consumer Research shows 54% of shoppers walk away when product information isn’t consistent across channels, and 71% return items that don’t match the listing—breakdowns that trace straight back to unclear positioning.

Product positioning examples

Now that you understand the basics of competitive positioning, explore two real-world examples of brands that have mastered the art. 

Graza: A new look for a long-loved gourmet product

When founder Andrew Benin launched Graza, an olive oil company, he recognized positioning could set his company apart in a highly saturated market. 

He could position Graza as just another gourmet, expensive olive oil. But what’s the fun in that? Instead, he targeted a gap in the market for quality olive oil that was approachable and exciting. 

His product positioning came through via standout neon-green squeeze bottles, playful branding, and strategic product placement. Andrew says these “micro-moments in the creator economy” have been effective marketing for the company. 

Graza’s instantly recognizable neon-green squeeze bottle, shown mid-recipe, turns a real kitchen moment into proof of the brand’s “gourmet-yet-everyday” positioning. Graza

Andrew was intentional about positioning his products differently. “We had to be very confident in our perspective and not let best practices dictate how our site was going to be created, because that’s how we would just feel like everybody else,” he says.

To learn more about how Andrew developed a passion for olive oil and founded Graza, listen to the full interview on Shopify Masters.

De La Calle: From niche beverage to mainstream Mexican soda

Positioning doesn’t always happen when you launch a new product. Sometimes, it means changing how customers see an existing one. 

Take De La Calle, for example. The brand, cofounded by Alex Matthews and Rafael Martin del Campo in 2021, started out selling a product called tepache (a fermented pineapple drink popular in Mexico) as an upscale health-focused beverage. 

But it didn’t really connect with the broader US audience. Using a recipe from Rafael’s family, who are from Mexico City, meant the tepache was authentic, but it wasn’t appealing enough to drive mass adoption. 

So, De La Calle repositioned tepache as a “modern Mexican soda,” trading the unfamiliar “fermented beverage” label for a category US shoppers already know. That small wording shift made the drink feel nostalgic to second- and third-generation Latinos accustomed to Mexican sodas, while also appealing to mainstream consumers hunting for healthier soft-drink alternatives.

With clearer messaging, more affordable pricing, and broader distribution in popular chains like Kroger and specialty Latino markets, De La Calle unlocked growth opportunities previously out of reach.

Matthews sums it up: “It’s so interesting because it is just a switch from a few words, from ’tepache’ to ’Mexican soda,’ but it feels like it’s the seed for a redirection, and it’s a greater simplification and clarification for the consumer.”

How small businesses can position products to compete

Even without the deep pockets of large corporations, small business marketers can find a competitive edge by using an effective product positioning strategy. Here are five steps to consider when strategizing.

1. Understand your customers

Instead of investing in expensive focus groups, small business owners can use ecommerce analytics to find customer insights. Data on customer habits can provide a real-world basis for future product positioning strategies.

At this point, you can also look at other data points from your own site. Purchase histories, session paths, and site-search terms show what shoppers look for and where they hesitate. 

Layer on browsing behavior—pages they linger on and products they compare—and you’ll start to see a clear picture of your ideal buyer. Studying the search queries they type and the standout features of your category’s bestselling SKUs pinpoints the benefits that matter most to them.

Use these insights to build a customer persona so everyone on your team knows who you’re trying to win and what matters most to this audience.

2. Explore the market landscape

To position your product, you need to understand how shoppers choose between your offer and competing ones. Market research will reveal the products and substitutes they consider and help you pinpoint what makes yours unique.

Conducting a competitive analysis can shed light on how other businesses cater to customer needs. Additionally, direct customer feedback through surveys or social selling reveals how shoppers rate your product’s strengths and gaps against the competition.

3. Evaluate your product (SWOT analysis)

What are the distinct advantages of your product? To fully grasp them, it’s beneficial to undertake a comprehensive SWOT analysis. The SWOT method—which can be applied to your products, brand, or business—allows you to delve into your product’s strongest features and find opportunities for refinement.

Leverage the customer personas you built in step one and the potential market opportunities uncovered during step two to find a unique space for your product in the minds of your customers.

This step is connected to the concept of a unique value proposition—the promise you make to your customer to solve their problem or meet their need through your product or service:

4. Write a positioning statement and plan your marketing

With personas, market fit, and product strengths defined, you have everything needed to write a unique value proposition for your products.

Now, you can build a product marketing plan to fulfill your value proposition and better understand how to promote your business. As Laura Schubert, co-founder of Fur, reminds aspiring founders, “For a consumer brand, you really do have to create the positioning and the world your product will sit in, or it’s not giving it a fair shake.”

Remember, a big marketing budget isn’t a prerequisite for effective positioning. As long as you understand your target customer, there are many budget-friendly marketing tools to promote your catalog.

5. Measure and refine your positioning 

The only way to know if your positioning works is by measuring it. Even the best products change as competitors, consumer tastes, and channels evolve. As you saw in the De La Calle example above, refining your positioning can improve brand perception, kickstart sales, and ultimately drive revenue. 

But what metrics do you use to measure positioning? Here are a few throughout the sales funnel: 

• Brand recall: Shows where your product is memorable or not. Track brand recognition with quarterly pulse surveys and monitor branded-search volume in Google Search Console. 
• Conversion rate: Measures the percentage of visitors who complete the desired action (purchase, sign-up, demo request). A high rate signals that the promise in your ad, search snippet, or referral matches what they find on the page; a weak rate flags a mismatch between positioning and visitor expectations. 
• Customer acquisition costs: Helps understand if your positioning resonates with your target audience. The higher the cost, the less likely you’re connecting with visitors. 
• Share of voice on keywords. Confirms that your angle is winning organic and social visibility. 

Capture these metrics over the past quarter to create a baseline. Identify your weakest metrics, then determine how you’ll tweak the position. For example, say your brand recall is low for a skin care line. Your line’s differentiator is “dermatologist-backed,” but consumers only seem to remember it as “organic.”

In this case, revisit your copy across key landing pages and ads to ensure consistency. If the current messaging is “Glow naturally,” replace it with something like “Dermatologist-developed formulas that repair skin in 30 days.” Shoppers will then remember your line for its clinical edge, and you can adjust other creative assets as needed.

Current product positioning strategies

Brands use three tactics to carve out a defensible position in crowded markets. 

Value-based positioning in today’s economy

What shoppers consider “value” is more than a low price. 

A 2025 study from PYMNTS found 67% of US consumers now pay for at least one service that saves them time, despite inflation pressures. Morgan Stanley’s 2024 Consumer Trends also found they’ll pay up to 5% more for products that make life easier. 

Buyers weigh the overall experience as much as the product itself. When developing your product positioning, consider the value it brings, such as:

• Time saved
• Durability
• Social status
• Joy
• Community 

Then quantify that promise. How much time can your product genuinely save consumers? Or how much longer can it last? Shout those benefits across your website, ad copy, unboxing, and email sequences. 

Digital and omnichannel positioning

Consumers do not shop the way they used to. Research shows the average consumer can span up to 50 online and offline touchpoints before buying something. They also expect personalized shopping experiences no matter which channel they find you on. Have no doubt omnichannel retail is going to become more popular in coming years, as online sales are projected to hit $6.8 trillion by 2028.

Here’s when your positioning statement does its job—keeping every channel on the same promise. Back to the skin care line example, say your position is “affordable, dermatologist-developed skin care for melanin-rich tones.” Weave that messaging into your channels and tweak. 

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

1. Create a 30-second TikTok video with a benefit hook and subtitles.
2. Add specifications and clinical charts to your product pages to serve as proof. 
3. Create a three-word headline and give out color swatch cards at a pop-up event. 
4. Rework existing Meta Ads to incorporate new messaging.

Elite Eleven’s pop-up strategy is a good example of omnichannel positioning. The brand began online, then opened up pop-ups to extend their product line into a physical setting. 

Using Shopify, Elite Eleven synced its inventory, customer profiles, and promotions, so shoppers could see identical product assortments, prices, and loyalty perks no matter where they engaged. This unified experience led to measurable growth for the brand, including a 240% sales lift at POS and 50% online-retail growth. 

Sustainability as a positioning advantage

Transparency is the new baseline. The G&A Institute found 93% of Russell 1000 companies in the US now publish ESG reports. And for good reason: PwC’s 2024 Voice of the Consumer survey found shoppers will pay 9.7% more for goods that are sustainable.

Sustainability can be a good competitive advantage, but you’ll have to prove it to customers. You can’t just say “We’re earth-friendly” without backing your claims up (a.k.a. greenwashing). Some actions you can take include:

• Using materials that lower your carbon footprint
• Setting measurable goals and sharing them with customers
• Getting third-party validation from organizations like B Corp, FSC, or GRS
• Reporting on your annual impact via PDF or on your PDP

Regardless of which product positioning strategy you lean on, it comes down to keeping your promises and showing proof for your claims. 

Positioning templates

Positioning templates are tools to guide your thought process during product or brand positioning discussions. They provide a structured format to help you identify a target audience, define your unique selling proposition, and articulate how you differ from competitors.

Here are four common types of value-based positioning templates:

1. Product positioning matrix

A positioning matrix is a chart to visually represent where your product stands compared to your competitors. It’s based on two or more key factors that are important to your customers. To create a positioning matrix:

1. Identify two product attributes that your customers care about (for example, this could be price and quality)
2. Draw a two-dimensional chart with one attribute on each axis
3. Plot your and your competitors’ products on the chart

Use the positioning matrix to spot whitespace. After you plot your product and competitors on the chart, look for empty or lightly populated zones—those represent attribute combinations (e.g., high quality plus mid-range price) no one owns yet. Decide whether you can credibly move or launch a product into that space, then frame your messaging around that distinctive position so customers instantly see how you’re different.

2. Perceptual maps

Perceptual maps are similar to positioning matrices. However, these charts are based on consumer perceptions rather than objective data. To create a perceptual map:

1. Identify two key attributes that your customers care about
2. Survey your customers to rate your product and your competitors’ products on these attributes
3. Plot the average scores for each product on a two-dimensional chart

A perceptual map lets you see the category through customer eyes. Once you’ve plotted the average ratings, look for empty spaces on the chart—those gaps reveal attribute combinations no brand currently owns and may signal an opportunity for a new product or a repositioning move. 

Notice where your product sits in relation to where you want it; a wide gap means your messaging, features, or pricing may need to shift to close the perception gap. And pay attention to tight clusters of competitor dots: they mark crowded territory where differentiation will be harder. Revisit the map over time to confirm that your repositioning efforts are nudging your product toward the spot you’ve chosen.

3. Brand positioning template

A brand positioning template uses the same framework to visualize the uniqueness of your brand by plotting your business and its competitors against various brand elements.

You can compare where brands sit in terms of specific elements such as pricing, color schemes, or sales channels. Or, you can consider more abstract factors, like a brand’s moral values. When completed, a brand template will reveal where the market is crowded and the areas you can pursue to make your brand stand out.

Start with this simple, free brand positioning template to help position your brand. It will identify unoccupied spots in your niche. To use the template, place your business and its competitors on the chart for a visual representation of your market.

4. Digital positioning scorecard

A positioning statement drives sales only when every touchpoint echoes the same promise. A fun and effective exercise you could do is grade your digital presence with a scorecard.

Pull the past 30 days of data from your Shopify Analytics, GA4, ad, and social dashboards. Then give each area a score from 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent). Then, total your points out of 25. 

Area to audit	Score yourself	Quick wins if you're < 3
Website messaging	5 = clear value prop + social proof visible above the fold 1 = jargon and missing benefits	Rewrite the header to state who your product is for and one benefit
Site-wide conversion rate	Compare your CVR to industry benchmarks. 5 = >25% higher than the median	A/B test a benefit-led headline on your top landing page, enable Shop Pay to cut checkout friction
Social media engagement	5 = 30% higher than the industry average 3 = at average	Promote your best-performing products with a TikTok video
Customer acquisition costs vs. LTV	5 = LTV to CAC ratio above 5:1 3 = around 3:1	Exclude low-LTV audiences from prospecting, and shift spend to high-intent retargeting or email flows
Message match across channels	Review your marketing assets 5 = Identical copy and visuals, bounce rate < 45%	Create a branding document and mandate all creatives pull from it

Product positioning FAQ

What is positioning, and why is it important?

Positioning is the process of deciding how you want your target audience to think about your brand, products, and services. You distill the advantage that sets you apart, then repeat that promise at every touchpoint. Clear positioning keeps teams aligned, sharpens marketing spend, and turns a real product edge into measurable revenue.

What are the 4 main components of product positioning?

1. Target market: Identifying the target market and understanding their needs, wants, and preferences.
2. Unique selling proposition (USP): Developing a unique selling proposition that clearly distinguishes the product from its competitors.
3. Brand identity: Creating an identity that resonates with the target market and builds loyalty.
4. Communication strategy: Developing a communication strategy that effectively conveys the brand’s message.

What is product positioning apex?

Product positioning apex is the sharp distillation of your broader product positioning strategy. Product positioning decides where your offer should sit in the market; the apex is the single phrase or mental image that plants that decision in the customer’s mind, making your product’s advantage instantly recognizable and memorable against competing options.

What best describes product positioning?

Product positioning is defining who your product is for and the specific problem it solves better than competitors. It’s how you develop your promise to customers and embed it across every touchpoint.

How has product positioning evolved in 2025?

Digital positioning has become more data-driven and omnichannel. Brands can collect vast streams of customer data and use it to influence their positioning statements. Consumers now quantify value by time saved and emissions cut, not just price.

How do you position products in saturated markets?

Isolate one underserved customer pain point. Then create a benefit that solves the pain point and build a catchy brand that grabs attention—like Graza did by offering olive oil in a squeeze bottle.

How can I leverage AI tools to refine my positioning strategy?

You can use AI platforms like Qualtrics XM Discover to identify emerging segments and Shopify Sidekick to analyze store data. Combine these insights with A/B testing tools to refine your messaging and positioning over time.

What are the 5 steps in the product positioning process?

1. Get customer insights: Gather qualitative and quantitative data to map needs and pain points.
2. Conduct competitive analysis: Understand how rivals frame similar benefits and identify gaps.
3. Audit your product’s edge: Run a SWOT analysis to uncover strengths and differentiators.
4. Create and share your messaging: Distill your edge into a core promise and adapt it for each channel.
5. Measure and refine: Track metrics like brand recall, CVR, CAC, and sentiment. Iterate based on feedback.