The Overview #14
This week: Fix positioning, buyer confusion taxes, and challenges that are a consequence of your decisions.
đ Hey there. This is The Overview, a weekly roundup of noteworthy B2B SaaS stuff. You'll find interesting tweets and articles from around the internet, plus highlights from my personal swipe file.
What challenge is a consequence of your decisions?

Whatâs the product marketing equivalent of this tweet? Maybe:
Early-stage B2B SaaS founders spend 99% of their time wondering why their customers donât care about the product, instead of wondering why 99% of their GTM strategy doesnât involve customer insights.
Regardless of how âgoodâ your product might be, if the strategy isnât based on your ideal customer profile and how well you understand their jobs, pains, gains, and triggers then youâre always going to struggle.
Fix it. Understand your ideal customer profile. Talk to current and future customers. Build personas. Extract value messaging and link to your product features.
Positioning isnât difficult

In a similar vein, this tweet from Peep Laja really boils successful positioning into two component pieces.
1) Know what they want and how they want it
2) Know that what youâre telling them is resonating with them
If you donât know what your customers want, talk to them. If you donât know if your messaging resonates with them, talk to them.
NIHITO: nothing important happens in the office.
Fix it. Understand your ideal customer profile. Talk to current and future customers. Build personas. Extract value messaging and link to your product features.
Buyer confusion is killing your marketing
This older post from Velocity Partners - one from my personal swipe file that I reference a lot! - looks at the potential blockers that can prevent good buyers from understanding who you are, what you do, and how you do it.
They list five types of buyer confusion tax:
Problem confusion: âI donât have that problem, it doesnât apply to meâ
Product confusion: âWhat does it actually do? Why do I need it?â
Tech confusion: âHow does it work? How do we use it?â
Category confusion: âIsnât this similar to Y? But weâre already doing X.â
Journey confusion: âHow do I find out more? How do I actually buy it?â
These taxes appear everywhere: in your websites, sales conversations, support experience, and all of your TOFU awareness marketing.
Fix it. Understand your ideal customer profile. Talk to current and future customers. Build personas. Extract value messaging and link to your product features.
Thatâs the Overview for this week
Did you notice the consistent theme for this weekâs edition? đ Iâll spell it out one more time:
Understand your ideal customer profile
Talk to current and future customers
Build personas
Extract value messaging and link to your product features
Help shape Building Momentum: Let me know what youâd like to see covered - hit me up on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Thanks for reading, and hereâs to building momentum.
James
Great insights JDP! Really interesting to see the Buyer Confusion Tax frameworks for Problem, Product, Tech, Category, Journey taxes. I can see those being great references when auditing an inbound funnel across all channels! R