Map your competition.

6 steps to position your startup.
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Ok, what's positioning? 
Positioning is the place your brand occupies in the minds of your customers. And how it is distinguished from the products of your competitors.

Most founders only focus on their immediate competition. 

A broader approach can expand your horizons. And help you figure out how to ACTUALLY differentiate yourself from your competitors. 

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Here's what I do:

1. Map Your Industry:
Begin by reviewing the landscape of relevant industries. "Relevant" means relevant to your ideal customer.

To do this, map out your immediate, and peripheral industries using a series of concentric circles.

Start in the middle, that’s you. Then use each ring to describe the core focus of your business in a more-and-more broad manner, from your user's perspective.

For example, if Baskin Robbins was filling this out, it might say the following from the center, out: Baskin Robbins, Ice Cream, Dessert, Food, Outing, Entertainment.

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2. List Market Participants: Use the same technique to get to know your direct and peripheral participants in the market. Assign 3-5 key players that are well-known in each industry (ie. circle segment) you just mapped.

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3. Pick Competitors: From the groups of market participants you just listed, pick the ones that are most relevant to your customers, their pain, and your approach. Pick one competitor from each Industry/circle you just mapped out.

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4. Define Main Characteristics. Now put yourself in the shoes of your customer. What are the things that make them choose one competitor over the other?

Think of things that 
- your customer would use to compare competitors in your industry
- you use to differentiate yourself from your competitors

For example, your audience might choose you or one of your competitors based on one of these things:
* pricing
* ease of use/user experience (ux)
* trust
* values
* lore/story/narrative
* exclusiveness
* breadth of product range

Or whatever makes sense in your industry. Come up with five that matter most to your customer.

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5. Differentiate Competitors: After you’ve decided on the five most important characteristics, rate each player on each of the characteristics. On a scale from 1-10 (eg. price 7, trust 3, etc.). Make a quick table. X-axis: competitors. Y-axis: characteristics.

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6. Pick your focus: The last step. You simply pick two of the characteristics you just came up with that are most important for you to focus on. The ones that are most important to you to differentiate yourself and your offer from your competition.

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Bonus tip for visual people like me: turn the last two comparisons (step 5. & 6.) into a simple graph to see how you compare.

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Hi, I'm Christoph Haase. At Otherstate.com we help startups with this kind of stuff.

So customers understand what you're selling. And investors get what you're pitching.

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This is an adapted version of the original I found at verynice. 