How post-PMF positioning is fundamentally different from startup positioning

Positioning gets a lot of attention in B2B SaaS right now. And I understand why. Competition is growing, products are harder to tell apart, and pipeline is harder to generate.

So positioning is more and more presented as the foundation for demand generation. If your campaigns aren’t performing, maybe your positioning isn’t strong enough.

There’s truth in that. If buyers don’t understand why they should choose you over the alternatives, generating demand gets a lot harder.

But most positioning advice assumes a company is still trying to establish itself in a market. What if you’ve been around for five or ten years, serve several industries, support different use cases and sell more than one product?

Is the answer still to narrow your positioning? Or should you first decide which markets you actually want to compete in?

Startup positioning: find a market where you can win

When you start a SaaS company, you usually have one product, a handful of customers and a hypothesis about who will benefit most from what you’ve built.

Your biggest challenge is finding a market where your product delivers enough differentiated value to win customers again and again.

So you experiment with segments, use cases and buying triggers. You learn which alternatives customers compare you with, what makes them switch, and where your advantage is strongest. At some point, one segment starts to click. Customers recognize the problem, understand your value and are willing to pay for it.

Your positioning gets clearer, because you’ve found a market where you have a reason to win.

Getting there is hard. Finding product-market fit can take years, and many startups never do. But early-stage companies have one advantage: there’s little existing business to protect. If their strongest opportunity turns out to be in a different segment, they can change direction without years of customer relationships, revenue and product investment holding them back.

They have more freedom to narrow their focus.

Now fast-forward a few years.

Post-PMF positioning: growth creates complexity

Your company has grown. You started with one product, but customers began using it for problems you hadn’t anticipated. Sales found opportunities in other industries. Customers asked for more functionality. You entered new markets, launched new products, maybe acquired another company.

Some of those decisions were strategic. Others were opportunistic. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. If customers in different markets are willing to pay for your product, why wouldn’t you take those opportunities?

But over time, your business becomes more diverse. You might now serve five industries, support ten use cases and sell three products. All those customers add to your revenue, but they don’t all buy for the same reasons.

Some care about productivity. Others care about compliance. Others need to replace a system that no longer does the job. They consider different alternatives, have different buying triggers and value different capabilities.

Yet marketing is often expected to bring all of it together in one positioning. One story that explains what the company does and why customers should choose it.

The result: positioning gets more abstract, because it has to fit everything the company has become. You end up with broad promises about driving efficiency, empowering teams or transforming operations. Statements that may be accurate, but don’t give buyers a reason to choose you.

What looks like a positioning problem may be the result of years of growth without clear market priorities.

Not every positioning problem is a positioning problem

Take a B2B SaaS company with €10 million in ARR. It serves several industries and sells several products. Most of its revenue has always come from one market, but that market is getting more competitive and growth is slowing. Meanwhile, the company has gained traction in other industries without investing much in them.

Campaigns aren’t delivering the pipeline it expected. So the company concludes its positioning needs to be sharper.

Maybe it does. But before starting a positioning exercise, I’d look at the market choices first:

• Which of these markets still have strong underlying demand?
• Where does the company have a competitive advantage?
• Which products solve problems customers urgently need to solve?
• Where are the strongest growth opportunities?
• Which markets are becoming less attractive, however well the product is positioned?

Maybe the company doesn’t need a better story. Maybe it hasn’t decided which parts of the business should drive its next stage of growth.

That’s a different strategic question.

You don’t have to stop serving a market to stop prioritizing it

This is where positioning advice for startups and established companies should split.

For a startup, narrowing your positioning often means narrowing the market you’re entering. For an established company, narrowing the positioning of the whole business can be needlessly restrictive.

You already have customers in several markets. They bring in revenue. Some may be very profitable, even if their market doesn’t offer much more growth. Why would you walk away from them?

There’s a difference between the markets you serve and the markets you actively pursue.

You can keep serving customers in five industries and decide that only two deserve significant new investment. For those two, you might build a dedicated go-to-market strategy, market-specific capabilities, sales expertise, and tailored marketing and enablement.

The other three don’t disappear. You keep supporting existing customers, take on good inbound opportunities and grow existing accounts. You just stop trying to grow everywhere at once.

That’s not a positioning exercise. It’s market and portfolio strategy. And it’s a step many established SaaS companies skip.

Does every market need its own positioning?

No. April Dunford makes a useful distinction here. In A Guide to Positioning with Multiple Products, Segments and Personas, she explains that different segments don’t automatically need different positioning.

Even when buyers work in different industries or consider somewhat different competitors, they may value the same differentiated capabilities. If what makes you competitive is the same, your positioning can stay the same. You might need different industry examples, customer stories, campaigns or sales materials. That doesn’t mean you need different positioning.

I agree. The distinction isn’t industries, company sizes or use cases. It’s whether you’re competing on the same differentiated value.

Dunford makes another point that matters more as companies mature. If different segments need entirely different capabilities to stay competitive, you may have a product strategy problem rather than a positioning problem.

So when you serve several markets, you need to know more than how to position your products. You need to know whether those markets still make strategic sense together.

Sometimes one positioning can carry several segments. Sometimes individual products need their own positioning under one company story. And sometimes your portfolio has grown into several businesses with different competitive dynamics.

There’s no universal answer. But forcing everything into one positioning before you understand those differences is the wrong place to start.

Company positioning isn’t product positioning

There’s another layer. As a company adds products, company positioning and product positioning start doing different jobs.

With one product, there’s often little difference between the two. With several, you may need a company story that explains what connects them and why customers should trust the company behind them. Each product can then have its own competitive positioning. And where it helps, that positioning becomes market-specific messaging and go-to-market plans.

The company story doesn’t have to carry every product advantage to every buyer. Its job is different.

Problems start when one positioning statement has to do all these jobs at once. Communicate the company’s identity, differentiate every product, resonate with every industry, cover every use case and support every campaign.

That’s a lot to ask of a few sentences.

The answer isn’t to make that statement more precise. It’s to be clear about which job each layer of positioning has to do.

Start with where to play, not what to say

For an established SaaS company, I’d work through three connected questions.

1. Where to play?
   Start with your existing markets and products. Where does your revenue come from, which markets are growing, where are your products competitive, and where is future demand likely to come from? Look beyond your current customers. The segment that brings in the most revenue today isn’t automatically the one with the most potential, and a smaller segment can be the better growth opportunity. The goal is to choose which product-market combinations deserve your investment.
2. How to win?
   Once you know where you want to compete, work out why customers there should choose you. Which alternatives are they considering? What makes you different? Which capabilities create value competitors can’t easily match? This is where competitive positioning comes in. You may find that several markets share the same differentiated value, so one positioning works. Or that some products or markets need their own. Either way, the decision follows from your competitive landscape.
3. What to say?
   Only then do you turn the strategy into messaging, sales pitches, campaigns and enablement. The narratives, proof points and materials that show customers why you’re relevant to them. That gives your demand generation a clear direction.

It’s not always a straight line. Positioning research can expose weak spots in your market strategy. A customer interview can uncover an opportunity you hadn’t seen.

But positioning shouldn’t have to make up for strategic choices nobody made.

Product-market fit isn’t permanent, or company-wide

We often talk about product-market fit as something a company reaches once and then moves past. But fit exists within a specific market.

A company can have strong fit in one segment while still exploring another. It can lose its advantage in an established market while gaining traction in a new one. Markets change. Customer expectations move. Competitors add capabilities. New technology makes existing solutions less valuable, or opens up new opportunities.

So reaching product-market fit once doesn’t mean every market you enter afterwards will be just as attractive. And the market that built your business won’t necessarily be the one that drives its future.

That’s why market strategy matters more after product-market fit, not less. It’s no longer only about where your product fits. It’s about checking, again and again, where you can win, where you want to invest and where your advantage is strongest.

Your next stage of growth might need better choices, not better positioning

I’m glad positioning is getting more attention. Good positioning helps customers understand why they should choose you. It gives sales and marketing a clear foundation.

But be careful treating it as the answer to every growth challenge. Especially for established B2B SaaS companies.

If demand in your core market is declining, better positioning won’t bring it back. If competitors have overtaken your product, messaging won’t restore your advantage. And if you’re spreading resources across too many markets, one compelling company story won’t make all those investments pay off.

Sometimes you do need to revisit your positioning. Sometimes you need to revisit the decisions behind it.

Startups need to find a market where they can win. Established SaaS companies need to decide which markets they should keep winning, and which should drive their next stage of growth.

Those are different problems. Before you start another positioning exercise, find out which one you’re solving.

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