Which Differentiator Fits You Best?
A six-question wizard that recommends one of ten differentiation types — price, speed, service, integration, category creation, and more — based on your product, market, and team.
Who it’s for: Founders and CMOs writing or revising positioning who are stuck choosing among three or four plausible differentiators.
Where is your product in its life?
Differentiation types suit different stages — a new product cannot claim reliability it has not earned.
Read it honestly, not charitably.
The wizard produces one recommended type plus up to two runners-up. Treat the runners-up as a pressure test: if the gap between first and second is one point, your team is probably debating between two coherent strategies. If the gap is three or more, your signal is strong enough to commit.
A recommendation does not mean every sentence of your positioning should use that differentiator’s language. It means the main claim on your homepage, in your pitch, and in your analyst briefing should be of that type. Secondary claims can — and should — come from the runners-up.
If the output shows Price as the top recommendation and you’re not a volume player with a structural cost advantage, treat it as a warning flag about the rest of the positioning, not a strategy to adopt.
Three moves you can make this week.
- Write the “We are the only ___ that ___” sentence using the recommended type. If it does not read as specific and defensible, the differentiator is not yet earned — the wizard caught the intent, not the reality.
- Pressure-test against the runner-up type. Ask a peer: would this company sound better if it led with the other type? If the answer is yes, the reanswer is yes, the real differentiator is probably a hybrid and worth a second round.
- Audit your homepage for contradictions. If the recommendation is service but your hero section leads with AI-powered performance, the site is fighting the positioning. Rewrite the top fold first.
Why these questions, in this order.
The six questions map onto the six structural forces that decide which differentiator can actually stick: product maturity, category density, what buyers pay for, team strength, margin appetite, and copy-ability. A differentiator that wins on one of these and loses on three is an aspiration; one that wins on four or more is a real claim.
The outcomes are intentionally unequal. Category creation, integration, and service are rated “strong” because they get more durable over time. Quality and design are “mixed” — they work brilliantly in the right hands and erode quickly in the wrong ones. Price is “weak” by design — most teams who land here are using price to mask a positioning problem one layer up.
The runners-up matter more than the winner in one specific case: when the gap is small, the honest move is usually to lead with the winner in market-facing copy and quietly reinforce the runner-up in product and onboarding. A single-strand differentiator is rare; a clean primary plus a coherent secondary is the common shape of durable positioning.
Run the full Positioning Audit.
Eight-lens diagnostic of your site against your own strategic intent.
- Should You Change Your Pricing Model?Seven criteria → a reasoned yes, no, or not yet.
- Is Your Positioning Defensible?Uniqueness, verifiability, sustainability, competitive response. A defensibility grade.
- Which Competitor Should You Watch Closest?Enter three competitors, answer five questions, get a priority ranking.