Messaging and Positioning Template: Learning From Data
Learn from your data using our lead scoring template, empowering you to refine your messaging and positioning with evidence
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Messaging and Positioning Template for Social Impact Leaders
Craft compelling messaging with our template for social impact leaders.
Craft compelling messaging with our template for social impact leaders. Boost engagement and drive change effectively
This is part 1 in a series below.
This is a series about building and testing your messaging, positioning, and value proposition
#1 - Messaging & Positioning Template for Social Impact Leaders
#2 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Core Unmet Needs
#3 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Ideal Client Profile
#4 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Differentiated Solution
#5 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Marketplace Category
#6 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Overcoming Objections
#7 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Testing
#8 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Learning from Data
The Essential Messaging and Positioning Template for Social Impact Leaders
While the unique qualities of your offerings may seem obvious to you, your audience (such as customers or investors) often struggle to understand them or find them valuable.
This disconnect can lead to confusion about what the company actually does and why it’s better than alternatives.
Without clarity and differentiation, companies risk failing to connect with their audience and getting growth and adoption.
Getting this right is the foundation of your innovation strategy, including your go-to-market and product strategy.
At Joyful Ventures, our innovation advisors specialize in helping social impact leaders like you create people-first innovation processes that maximize your and your organization’s impact.
Common Challenges to Effective Messaging and Positioning Statements
A key challenge to creating effective messaging and positioning statements is the lack of a truly deep understanding of your customer needs and your top compelling differentiator.
Traditional approaches to positioning statements often fall short by not helping you identify what those are.
While they share what should be included, if you lack a truly deep understanding of three key items, you are at risk of generating "word salad" —a collection of platitudes or solution features and benefits that lack substance and fail to engage customers meaningfully.
Given the multitude of opinions around how to create a powerful statement, it’s incredibly easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees.
To address this, I offer three simple principles. You need to develop a clear perspective on:
• Core Needs: who is your best ideal client profile and their “dream outcome”
• Unmet: how existing solutions and workarounds fail to get them to that dream outcome
• Differentiated Solution: how your solution effectively bridges with a clear differentiator
• Core Needs: who is your best ideal client profile and their “dream outcome”
• Unmet: how existing solutions and workarounds fail to get them to that dream outcome
• Differentiated Solution: how your solution effectively bridges with a clear differentiator
In essence, you are the bridge between their dream outcome and their current state, where they struggle to achieve that outcome
So how do you express this in the fewest words possible?
Introducing Our Messaging and Positioning Template
To communicate how and why your solution is compelling, it's helpful to start with some structure, which I provide below, instead of a blank slate.
Below, I suggest using the messaging and positioning statement, use case statement, and specific offer to create a powerful three-point punch.
• The first concisely clarifies how you solve your target’s core unmet need
• The second clarifies how one would specifically use your solution
• The third addresses implicit objections to adopting your solution
• The second clarifies how one would specifically use your solution
• The third addresses implicit objections to adopting your solution
An additional differentiation of this framework is that I aim to help you frame your value proposition in plain language that resonates emotionally.
This enables you to directly show customers and prospects, versus going through another level of translation to make it speak to them.
To promote faster learning loops, consider minimizing time spent on wordsmithing concision and elegance.
Instead maximize the time generating the key items in the formula below and evaluating which specific items are the best for you to use.
Once you have the correct, clear core elements, you can work on concision and elegance. I share more tools on how to do that in the next piece in this series.
1) Set a Time Cap
Limit this and the following idea generation steps to a few days, for instance.
Start your testing process as soon as possible as part of a sprint of perhaps 2 to 4 weeks.
When you get stuck, brainstorm your top challenges, rate each one, brainstorm, and finally prioritize and execute on solutions. Rinse and repeat.
Consider “letting go” of any requirements so you can make faster progress. Remember, the guide is a list of best practices, not a strict checklist you must follow.
For more on how to brainstorm cost-effective solutions, read “5 Key Strategies to Innovate without Scope Creep”
2) Consider Evidence Quality
As you go through the exercises below, the ideal is to anchor your ideas with real customer data — e.g., customer notes or data from your bright spots we already identified in your prior work on Ideal Client Profiles.
As you rate different options, you can even use an "Evidence Quality Score" to take into account how “rooted” in your target market the idea is. This is useful if you have a strong hypothesis about something but lack data, which generates self-awareness. This can be a reason to focus a sprint on that segment to collect more data and improve your evidence quality score.
Consider the following scale for evidence quality:
• 4-5 for strong evidence (based on prior, repeated actions),
• 3 for qualitative insights (such as interviews or feedback),
• 2 for secondary data (like forums or broad surveys)
• 1 for little evidence (based on gut feelings or intuition).
• 4-5 for strong evidence (based on prior, repeated actions),
• 3 for qualitative insights (such as interviews or feedback),
• 2 for secondary data (like forums or broad surveys)
• 1 for little evidence (based on gut feelings or intuition).
3) Use AI to brainstorm and refine
Additionally, consider using AI tools like Perplexity or ChatGPT, enabling their search functionality to get to a draft faster.
Here are example types of prompts you can try. Please make these your own. Combine and modify them based on what is and isn’t working for you.
Goal | Prompt Example Type |
Validate | For each score above, support each with a quote or citation and give a 1-5 score on “evidence quality”. Identify the top three issues or devil's advocate counter arguments and rate the importance of each. Then score what you shared above on each of those risks. |
Understand | What are the top 10 [key item in the list below. Example: pain points, like concrete tasks, artifacts, workflows, critical to Dream Outcome]. |
Brainstorm | Give me more 10 more options or variations on XYZ |
Prioritize & Compare | Create a table comparing XYZ based on [key criteria you’ve entered, such as significance or level of help needed] from 1-5 each and share why for each score. Generate a total score and sort from high to low. |
Refine | Rate from 1-5 (high) on [key criteria, like cohesion, sounds like how I talk, etc]. Automatically keep revising, sharing, and scoring until you're at a 5 out of 5 WITHOUT asking for my continuous input |
If you have mountains of customer qualitative customer data, consider using NotebookLM to input that data into it and “talk” to and synthesize your data. There are also other paid user research tools that help you do that, such as Dovetail.
Next: Core Unmet Needs
Now that we understand the importance of messaging and positioning, I’ll outline the key components of the formula: core unmet need, unique solution, and social proof.
And perhaps even more importantly — I’ll also explain how to gather the insights needed to fill in the details.
See the next article in the series below
This is a series about building and testing your messaging, positioning, and value proposition
#1 - Messaging & Positioning Template for Social Impact Leaders
#2 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Core Unmet Needs
#3 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Ideal Client Profile
#4 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Differentiated Solution
#5 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Marketplace Category
#6 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Overcoming Objections
#7 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Testing
#8 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Learning from Data
Three opportunities
• Need more guidance? Get your free innovation audit.
• Want an actionable template? If you share your insights, I’ll send one over.
• Want updates about future related content? Subscribe below 👇
• Need more guidance? Get your free innovation audit.
• Want an actionable template? If you share your insights, I’ll send one over.
• Want updates about future related content? Subscribe below 👇
Related Posts
Messaging and Positioning Template: Ideal Client Profile
Find your Ideal Client Profile — the foundation to compelling messaging and positioning — with our template.
Messaging and Positioning Template: Testing
Use our testing template to refine your messaging and positioning for impact
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