Positioning for tech companies. Author of the best-selling books Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch.

April Dunford is the world's foremost authority on product positioning for B2B technology companies. As a consultant, April helps companies make complex products easy to understand and love. After a 25-year career as a VP of Marketing at various fast-growing technology firms, she has consulted with 300 technology companies, including Google, Epic Games, Postman, and others. April is the acclaimed author of the best-selling book, "Obviously Awesome," which delves into the art of positioning, and the newly released, "Sales Pitch," which unveils the secrets to crafting a winning sales narrative in the market.

April Dunford

ANNOUNCEMENT - The new updated and expanded Obviously Awesome is coming!!! 🎉 🎉 

I've been sitting on this one for a while, so I'm SUPER EXCITED to get this out into the world!! 

Almost 7 years ago, I published Obviously Awesome, my attempt at describing the process I use to position B2B tech products and companies. I didn't expect many people to read it. I was wrong. 

Since then, more than 100,000 people have bought the book, and countless companies have used the process. A few hundred did that with me directly, and many, many more of you worked through the process on your own using the book. I've learned a LOT over the past 7 years, and I decided it was time to bring those learnings back to the book. 

The new edition is coming in FEBRUARY (don't ask me for a specific date - it's Amazon's world, we're just living in it). Here's what's new:

📙 5 STEPS (not 10) - In the first edition, I describe 5 components of positioning and a 10-step process for doing it. Some of you really hated that the number of steps in the process wasn’t equal to the number of components. The first few steps were pre-work, and the final steps are work that follows the exercise. I have repositioned those steps (see what I did there), and we now have 5 components and 5 steps. 

📙 The PRE-WORK section has been expanded to include key decisions a team should make before beginning a positioning exercise. This is based on my work with clients, and I think it will greatly improve any team’s chances of success when following this process.

📙 I have included sections that are more relevant to MULTIPRODUCT companies grappling with how to position their products in a company with multiple offerings. 

📙 Some steps in the process have been significantly expanded—particularly the Differentiated Value step. Most teams told me they got stuck there. I hope this new, improved section helps to clarify the concept.

📙 The final section, What Happens AFTER a Positioning Exercise, has been greatly expanded. This new section reflects my current thinking on how best to create a sales pitch to test positioning and then turn that positioning into messaging.

📙 For the first time, there will be a HARDCOVER edition. Most of you won't care, but I have seen some seriously well-loved (but also beat-up and scraggly) paperbacks at conferences, and I decided some of you need a copy that’s a little more durable!

🎙️ To go with the book, I'm reviving the Positioning PODCAST and will release a new series of episodes that dive into the book's new material. 
✍ The same goes for the NEWSLETTER (always the best way to follow my stuff). 

A new podcast episode and newsletter article drop TOMORROW - links in the comments.

You don't want to start any positioning work before making a key set of decisions

1️⃣ Is now the right time? 
Do we have enough customer experience to understand how prospects make decisions? Have we worked with enough customers to know - at least at a high level - what makes a good-fit customer different from a bad-fit customer? If the answer is no, we might want to develop a positioning thesis and tighten our positioning after we have closed more business.

2️⃣ Are we clear who this positioning is for? 
Positioning for customers is not the same as positioning for investors or employees. If we start working on positioning and half the team thinks we are building a sales pitch, the other half thinks we are building an investor pitch, very bad things will happen. 

3️⃣ What exactly are we positioning?  
Are we positioning the company, a product, or a group of products? The answer to this question might require deeper thinking about your go-to-market strategy. Getting a clear answer to this question will save you from having to debate this point mid-way through your positioning work.  

4️⃣ Which persona are you positioning for? Teams outside the sales team may not understand what a deal champion is and may be overly focused on positioning for other personas. When we talk about "value," we need to be clear about who perceives it. 

If you don't make these decisions up front, I can guarantee you will regret it. I've seen many teams rush into positioning work, only to stop midway to debate these points and backtrack to redo work they have already started. 

(I'm covering this topic in more detail in the newsletter and the podcast this week - links in comments)

G2V Optics Inc.

Chief Revenue Officer (CRO)

Vice President Marketing

Head Of Marketing

G2V Optics is a  global leader in smart, precision lighting and is committed to creating enabling technologies to power the world of tomorrow. G2V currently provides technology solutions to world-leading researchers, Fortune 500 technology firms, and aerospace companies in over 40 countries.

G2V sells several solar simulation product lines globally and enables our customers to develop solutions for a more sustainable built world. Our customers use G2V's photons to drive the most critical developments in solar renewable energy, reliable advanced materials, and space exploration of this decade and beyond. Across the value chain of each of these sectors, highly reliable lighting is needed to develop, manufacture, process, and test the devices and outputs in each case. Our software-controlled Engineered Sunlight™ technology acts as a foundation to replicate geography-, season-, and altitude-specific natural lighting environments, as well as create light that matches the spectrum, uniformity, and stability requirements of scientific standards.
 
We're proud to say that one of our key projects includes providing solar simulation light arrays to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center for testing the OSAM-1 spacecraft.

Marketing Technology Lead

The Fishin Hole

Digital Marketing:
•	Created and presented KPI reports to report on previous month campaigns to executive leadership group
•	Data mining using Google Analytics and back end order database to find marketing opportunities (CRO, SEO)
•	Implemented new events into Google Tag Manager (GTM) including adding internal links tag to GTM to track the most popular link clicks on the site
•	Developed Marketing Editorial Calendar - documenting all major events including when we need to start the marketing project: strategy, planning, creating creatives, writing, ad campaign setup etc via a custom Airtable base
•	Developed digital marketing strategy for annual in-store blow out sale including 
-	Creation of a hashtag that will be used annually and the purchase of the vanity domain
-	Developed Google Ads – search and display ads for people searching for general fishing terms and people who browse competitor websites (Custom Intent Audiences)
-	Built Remarketing display ads for people who previously visited the website
-	Developed Facebook ads - day before, during and last day campaigns targeted to lookalike audience resulting in a relevancy score of 9/10

Web Development:
•	Developed custom ecommerce site improvements using ColdFusion 2016, JQuery 1.12 and Bootstrap 3.3, and HTML
•	Built new site components including: city focused contact page landing pages, product wishlist, product reviews, rebuilt the My Account profile page for logged-in users to be mobile responsive
•	Developed functions to consume Airtable data via their REST API into ColdFusion app

Admin Backend ColdFusion Development:
•	Developed system to capture shipping box dimensions and shipping quotes for an order.
•	Developed system to generate order shipping data for import into the EST 2.0 (Canada Post's) shipping software.
•	Built a system to allow non-technical colleagues to associate ecommerce products, fish species and techniques, and other relevant context to existing blog articles

eCommerce Digital Marketing Manager

Black Hair Spot

[Startup]
Built and executed a content marketing strategy publishing over 100 in depth articles

Successfully generated traffic using content marketing and SEO, with a high of over 30,000 unique monthly visitors coming to the website from all over the world. 

Grew the Facebook page from 100 to 2500 within months using Facebook Ads

Spearheaded and managed a team of programming/software development companies, 7 writers, an editor, a senior business architect, and business advisors.

Raised angel capital to fund business architecture & development

CEO & Founder

nyche marketing

[Business Owner]

An internet marketing generalist with hands-on experience with SEO, PPC, Marketing Automation, Content Marketing  & Social Media marketing.

Rendered full online/internet marketing solutions for growing businesses.
Developed and published mobile responsive websites.
Developed project proposals, client contracts, and prototypes.
Developed our Living Website methodology.

Planned and executed On-Page, Technical and Local SEO campaigns for client websites.

Gained and fully managed an outsourcing team of 5 people including a PHP programmer, website designer, graphic designer, junior SEO consultant, and PPC specialist. 
Worked with various other freelancers (graphic designers, videographers, business consultants) to accomplish client strategic and marketing goals

Delivered presentations about online marketing to business groups

Agency Owner

BNI® Business Network International

Top 3 Nominee for Vice President of the Year award

Vice President, Membership, Education Coordinator & Chapter Mentor

nyche software solutions

[Business Owner]

Business Analysis, Project Management:
Elicited requirements
Facilitated executive meetings
Marketing to prospective clients
Developed project proposals, client contracts, prototypes

Software Development:
Designed, built and tested B2C and Wholesaler eCommerce website using the Adobe Coldfusion MX7 framework along with HTML, JavaScript & CSS
Designed, built and tested back end/internal eCommerce fulfillment software allowing internal staff to manage online orders and send to delivery
Optimized website to attract over 30,000 monthly visitors
Extracted thousands of products from PDF catalogue
Initiated and ran customer survey to gather feedback on the site and find new products and services to offer

Designed, built and tested online ordering software system for retail optometrist and eyewear stores to order prescription lenses  
Optimized prescription goggles website to attract 5 and 6 figure clients

Designed, built and tested online sewing class website having functionality to search, filter and apply to in-store sewing classes

Web Developer

Cromwell Consulting Inc

[Contract]
Various Java software development contracts - highlights include:

Utilized Microsoft Project 2003 to keep track of project tasks
Mentored and taught Java and Object Oriented Design to co-personnel
As Programming Supervisor, performed code and design evaluations, made recommendations for improvement
Gathered and documented user requirements
Diagrammed and presented application framework to all team members
Communicated effectively and persuasively in written or spoken word
Designed web applications using UML, Design Patterns, Anti Patterns
Documented and illustrated system architecture by describing application components utilizing Use Cases, Class Diagrams and OIDs
Developed and built e-business applications using the Java platform
Lead migration and deployment of application ‘releases’ for iterative system testing cycles
Designed and built Web User Interfaces

Senior Java Developer

Alberta Motor Association

[Contract]
Data Migration FEP project migrating millions of rows of data from one format into the new system schema. 
Designed and developed error messages, text file to DB and entity name parsing components. 
Worked on hundreds of transformations from simple to complex logic. 
Developed framework of entity duplicate processing routine – iterating through hundreds of thousands of entities. 
Developed data partitioning routine to allow for processing of thousands of records within 2GB java heap maximum on 32 bit machines.
Utilized regular expressions within SQL to find exact data matches.
Developed Junit framework to test transformations. 
Improved loading of million row Canada Post address database from minutes to seconds.

Workers' Compensation Board

[Full-Time]
Worked with Metadata Architect and Data Architect to review system deliverables for quality and adherence to corporate standards.

Developed governance around the use of the Java platform and Open Source Software within the WCB.

Provided direction to project teams - focusing on aligning project objectives to enterprise strategy where feasible.

Trained users in how to use the corporate metadata repository.

Worked with service provider - as the enterprise architecture single point of contact – captured, reviewed and verified architectural and non-functional requirements, principles and standards.

Selected open source frameworks and documented architecturally significant decisions.

Kept up-to-date with technology trends by reviewing a variety of technology articles, reading blog posts and listening to various podcasts.

Successfully developed a business case to analyze current batch processes and to perform a Proof of Concept of leading Java batch frameworks.

Worked on developing infrastructure for a Corporate Address Book.

Enterprise Architecture - IT Architect I

[Full-Time]
Extended and refactored existing framework to complete system development. Mentored and taught junior-to-java co-workers. Developed client and server side components using J2EE - JSP, JSP Tag library, Servlets, JDBC. 

Developed user interface components using Java - Applets, Servlets, JSP, and EJB technologies, Oracle RDBMS

Lead Java Developer

Marketing. Metrics. Martech. Revenue @ G2V ☀️ Engineered Sunlight™

Full-Spectrum (Stack) Digital Marketer building demand generation marketing engines that drive revenue and enterprise value for B2B hardware tech companies. 

~Airtable fangirl~


I am a former software developer turned experienced technical marketer who directly drives net-new revenue for tech startups to increase enterprise value.

A self-taught digital marketer who has grown from thinking IT ruled the company, to understanding key business growth drivers such as agile go-to-market strategies, building brand equity, and reporting to key financial metrics (customer acquisition cost (CAC), Gross Margin return on investment (ROI), revenue), aligning and executing marketing to corporate goals. 

As the marketer at G2V Optics, I architected, designed, and built the multi-channel digital demand generation engine that has attracted FAANG companies, Ivy League schools, national research laboratories, and top-tier aerospace agencies like NASA - driving millions in bottom-line revenue.

My goal is to have my sales colleagues focus on consultative conversations with high-intent prospective customers instead of the drudgery of (high CAC) outbound activities.

taplio

The Battle

April Dunford

Nyssa Cromwell

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreApril Dunford's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

April Dunford

Nyssa Cromwell

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}April Dunford's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreApril Dunford's LinkedIn Performance