Many companies struggle to grow, not because of a bad product, but because of a silent killer: product confusion. Even great technology products fail when customers, sales, and marketing can't confidently explain what they do.
Product Confusion Starts Within Your Walls
If I asked ten people in your company to describe your product and its functions, what kind of answers would I get? Chances are, I would get several different responses—and that’s a big problem. If your teams cannot clearly articulate your product's functions and the unique value it delivers, Houston has a big problem.
The result? Deals take longer to close or get stalled, your teams resort to discounting, and your messaging doesn’t resonate with your ideal customer profile.
Watered Down Messaging is the Symptom - Not the Cause
To salvage weak positioning, teams will think they need to throw more assets at the problem - a refreshed datasheet, another sales deck, content swarming your ideal customer profile. You’ll spend all this time thinking that if you bombard them, your value will finally click. Meanwhile, they’ve quietly disqualified you from their buying cycle.
I can tell you that none of this will work if your core positioning foundation is weak. If your product story isn’t nailed — clear differentiation, a strong value narrative (e.g., "reduces infrastructure costs by 30% and increases uptime to 99.99%"), ruthless clarity on the problem you solve, and a wicked understanding of the type of buyer that cares about the value you deliver — no amount of “all hands on deck” will save you.
The Cure - Rock Solid Product Marketing
Product Marketing is about focus. It’s about consistently telling the product’s narrative through a shared notion of your ideal customer profile, business champion, competitors, and differentiated messaging. And that story is told to both your internal and your external audiences. This manifests in a variety of ways:
Internal Tools: competitive battlecards, deal anatomy, pitch decks.
External Content: collateral, customer stories, web copy, campaign programs, content calendar.
However, that narrative is built off of a solid foundation of your core positioning:
What your product is / what it does (also called the market category that gives your prospect a frame of reference)
What you deliver that is unique, and the value of those unique capabilities
The best product marketers do three critical things that keep confusion from creeping into your company:
They define the positioning first. Before a single slide is made, they build the positioning and messaging framework—the single source of truth for how your product is described, who it’s for, and why it matters.
They align the whole company around it. Product, sales, marketing, executives—everyone sings from the same song sheet.
They reinforce the story everywhere. Every touchpoint reinforces the same straightforward story in sales calls, marketing campaigns, website copy, and pricing conversations.
If your product marketing concerns making decks look pretty or pumping out content, you must fix that quickly. But that subject is for another blog post.
The Symptoms of Bad Positioning
How do you know if you have a positioning problem?
Your sales team automatically enters full-demo mode within ten minutes of a discovery call. (This means they are not adequately qualifying the prospect.)
Your prospects keep saying, “that’s a great feature just like the other guys”.
Sales blames marketing, marketing blames sales.
If your messaging starts to look like a spaghetti bowl of words or includes words like “next generation”, “seamless”, “unify”, “cloud-native”.
Or your messaging relies on buzzwords like 'next generation' or 'AI' without specific value propositions.
All of that is product confusion; when buyers are confused, they don’t buy—or at least not from you.
Conclusion
Don't let product confusion stifle your growth. Invest in rock-solid product marketing, align your teams, and tell a straightforward, consistent story. Your customers will thank you. Ready to take your business to the next level? Visit Liberis Consulting today and discover how our expert team can help you overcome product confusion and drive sustainable growth. Don't let confusion hold you back—partner with us and unlock your business's full potential!
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