Positioning
In plain English
AI writing tools are only as good as what they know about you. With nothing to go on, they fall back on safe, empty phrases — "premium quality," "thoughtfully designed," "for those who appreciate the finer things." Every shop in the world gets the same words.
This screen is a short form where you write down five things:
- Who else could a customer buy from instead of you?
- What can you do that those alternatives can't?
- Why does that matter to a customer?
- Who cares about that most?
- What kind of product are you, in their mind?
That's it. Once it's saved, every AI tool in the app — ad copy, product descriptions, landing pages, offer design, even UGC captions — gets fed those answers before it writes anything.
The difference is immediate and obvious. Instead of "premium skincare," you get "cold-processed in 48-hour batches, for skin that reacts to everything else."
Twenty minutes. It's the best-value setup task in the app.
How to use it
- Click "Growth Science" in the left-hand menu, then "Positioning."
- Work through the five sections. Write in plain sentences — you're briefing a new employee, not writing an advert.
- If you get stuck, click "Suggest." The app reads your products and reviews and drafts a starting point for you to edit.
- Be specific in section 2. "High quality" tells the AI nothing. "Cold-processed, 48-hour batches" tells it everything.
- Click Save.
- Go and generate some ad copy or a product description. You'll see the difference immediately.
- Revisit it whenever your business genuinely changes — a new market, a new range, a new competitor.
⏱ ~20 min, once · 💳 Pro+ · 🎯 Every AI tool in the app gets better
Why this matters for your business
Most shop owners can't answer "why should someone buy from you instead of the alternative?" in one clear sentence. That's not a criticism — it's genuinely hard, and you're too close to it. But it has an expensive consequence: if you can't say it, your ads can't say it, your product pages can't say it, and your customers never hear it.
Filling in this form forces the sentence to exist. That alone is worth the twenty minutes, and plenty of merchants report the exercise changed how they talk about the business entirely.
The mechanical benefit is bigger, though. This app has a lot of AI writing tools, and the gap between AI copy that sounds like everyone and AI copy that sounds like you is almost entirely about what the tool knows before it starts. Filling in this form once upgrades every one of them, permanently, with no per-tool configuration.
There's also a safety property worth knowing. Only what you wrote gets passed to the writing tools. Customer reviews are used to help suggest a draft, but the text that gets injected into your marketing is your own. Nothing a customer typed can end up quoted in your ads by accident.
What this typically unlocks
| What you get | Typical result |
|---|---|
| Quality of every AI-written piece | Noticeably better, across all tools |
| Time spent editing AI output | −60 to −75% |
| Consistency across channels | High — one source, every tool |
| Clarity in your own head | Often the biggest surprise benefit |
| Setup effort | Once, ~20 minutes |
What you actually get
Five sections to fill in.
| Section | The question | What good looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Competitive alternatives | If you didn't exist, what would they buy? | Include the honest ones — "nothing, they'd carry on as they are" is a valid alternative |
| Unique attributes | What can you do that those can't? | Facts, not adjectives. "48-hour batches" beats "carefully made" |
| Value | So what? Why does that matter to a customer? | Translate each attribute into an outcome they feel |
| Best-fit customers | Who cares most about that value? | Be narrow. "Everyone" is not a position |
| Market category | What do they think you are? | The shelf they'd look for you on |
The AI suggestion helper
If you're staring at a blank form, the Suggest button reads your products and customer reviews and drafts a first version.
Use it as a starting point, not an answer. It's good at spotting things customers keep mentioning that you've stopped noticing. It is not good at knowing your strategy, your margins, or where you're heading next — so edit it.
Where your positioning gets used
Once saved, it's automatically supplied to:
| Tool | What changes |
|---|---|
| Ad copy | Angles and hooks reflect your actual difference |
| CRO & storefront copy | Page copy speaks to your best-fit customer |
| Awareness copy | Message matched to reader and to your position |
| Offer Lab | Tier names and value props fit your brand |
| Second Purchase | Reorder nudges sound like you |
| UGC | Captions match your voice |
You don't switch this on anywhere. Saving the form is the switch.
How it fits with brand voice
They're different jobs and they work together:
| Positioning | Brand voice | |
|---|---|---|
| Answers | What to say | How to say it |
| Contains | Your difference, your customer, your category | Tone, vocabulary, rules |
| Example | "Cold-processed for reactive skin" | "Warm, plain-spoken, no hype" |
Fill in both. Positioning first — it's the one that changes what the copy is actually about.
How it works (without the technical bits)
Only the fields you wrote are passed on to the writing tools. Review text is used to help draft a suggestion, never injected into your marketing directly.
Real merchant scenarios
Scenario A — Twenty minutes, measurably better copy
Setup. Skincare brand using the AI copy tools daily. Output was competent and utterly generic.
Before:
"Premium skincare, thoughtfully formulated for radiant skin.
Experience the difference quality makes."
They filled in positioning:
- Alternatives: department-store brands, dermatologist prescriptions, doing nothing
- Unique: cold-processed, 48-hour small batches, 6 ingredients max, no fragrance
- Value: works for skin that reacts badly to everything else
- Best-fit: people with sensitive or post-treatment skin who've been let down repeatedly
- Category: minimalist sensitive-skin skincare
After:
"Six ingredients. No fragrance. Cold-processed in 48-hour batches
because heat degrades what actually works. Made for skin that
reacts to everything else."
Results:
| Before | After | |
|---|---|---|
| Ad click-through | 0.9% | 1.7% |
| Product page conversion | 2.1% | 2.8% |
| Editing time per piece | ~15 min | ~4 min |
Scenario B — The form that changed the strategy
Setup. Furniture retailer sat down to fill in the form and got stuck for 40 minutes on "unique attributes."
Why. They couldn't name a single thing they did that three competitors didn't. Same suppliers, same price bracket, same delivery.
What that revealed. They didn't have a positioning problem in their copy. They had a positioning problem in the business.
Action. Over the following two quarters they built one: made-to-measure sizing on their six best-selling ranges, which none of their competitors offered.
Then filled in the form with something true.
Result. Revenue up 44% over the following year. The form didn't cause that — but it was the moment they realised nothing they said could ever be distinctive until something they did was.
Scenario C — Narrowing the audience grew the business
Setup. Pet-supplies merchant wrote "best-fit customers: all dog owners."
The suggestion helper read their reviews and proposed something narrower: owners of large-breed dogs with joint problems, mostly older dogs.
They resisted. Narrowing felt like giving up 90% of the market.
They tried it anyway on a single campaign.
| Broad targeting | Narrow positioning | |
|---|---|---|
| Click-through | 0.7% | 2.9% |
| Conversion | 1.4% | 4.1% |
| Cost per customer | £61 | £19 |
Why it works. "For dogs" speaks to nobody in particular. "For a nine-year-old Labrador that's started struggling with stairs" speaks precisely to someone — and that someone buys.
Scenario D — Keeping it current
Setup. Merchant filled in positioning at launch, then added a premium range 18 months later at triple the price.
Nobody updated the form. Every AI tool kept writing to the original budget-conscious customer, including all the copy for the new premium range.
Symptom. The premium range converted at a third the rate of the standard one, despite better products and photography.
Fix. Updated positioning to cover both tiers and who each was for. Regenerated the premium copy.
Result. Premium conversion tripled within six weeks.
The lesson. Positioning is set-and-forget until the business changes. When it does, this is the first thing to update.
Best practices
✅ Do this in your first week. Everything downstream improves.
✅ Write facts, not adjectives. "48-hour batches" is usable; "premium quality" is not.
✅ Be uncomfortably narrow on best-fit customers. Narrow positions convert; broad ones don't.
✅ Include "doing nothing" as a competitive alternative. For many products it's the real competitor.
✅ Use Suggest to break a blank page, then rewrite it in your own words.
✅ Update it when the business changes — new range, new market, new competitor.
❌ Don't write what you wish were true. The copy will make promises the product can't keep.
❌ Don't say "everyone." That's an absence of positioning.
❌ Don't fill it in once and never look again for years.
❌ Don't skip it because it's not a "real" feature. It's the input to a dozen real features.
Plan tiers
| Capability | Free | Starter | Pro | Agency | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Positioning canvas | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Injection into all copy tools | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| AI suggestion helper | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Version history | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Per-store positioning across a group | — | — | — | ✓ | ✓ |
Frequently asked
How long does this take? About 20 minutes if you know your business well. Longer if the "unique attributes" section is hard — and if it is, that's useful information in itself.
Does it change copy I've already generated? No. It affects everything generated from that point on. Regenerate anything important that predates it.
Can customers' review text end up in my ads? No. Reviews help the Suggest button draft a starting point, but only fields you wrote are supplied to the writing tools.
What if I sell to two very different audiences? Cover both in the best-fit section and be explicit about which products serve which. Scenario D is what happens if you don't.
Is this the same as brand voice? No. Positioning is what to say; brand voice is how to say it. Fill in both, positioning first.
Do I have to fill in every section? It works with partial information, but the value scales with completeness. The unique-attributes and best-fit sections matter most.
Can I see what changed after an edit? Yes — version history keeps prior versions.
What if I genuinely have no unique attribute? Then you've learned something important. See Scenario B — that finding is worth more than any copy the tool could have written.
See also
- Growth Science overview — all eight tools
- Journey — the diagnostic that tells you where to focus
- Jobs — your customers' own words, to sharpen this
- Awareness — matching message to reader
- Brand voice & personas — how to say it
- Ad & email copy — a tool that uses this
- CRO & storefront copy — another one
- Offer Lab — offer design informed by your position