How to challenge Gmail via positioning?
As a business strategy.
Take the example of Gmail for all vs. ProtonMail for privacy-focused individuals.
Positioning is making your product best for a sizable niche.
ProtonMail targets privacy-focused individuals with privacy and security features.
It makes your product different and hard to compare with alternatives.
ProtonMail offers an ad-free experience and zero-access encryption.
With the correct positioning, prospects can determine if you’re the right fit for their needs.
ProtonMail is the preferred option for prospects interested in privacy and security.
Prospects make sense of your product by making a comparison with the alternatives.
ProtonMail offers anonymous account creation and uses end-to-end encryption.
But Gmail collects user data and uses standard encryption.
Positioning is the soul of sales and marketing.
It defines your competitive alternatives, pricing, and key product features.
ProtonMail started as an email service provider, which made Gmail its competitor.
Prospects of ProtonMail compare it with Gmail before buying its services.
There are five components of effective positioning:
-Competitive alternatives
-Unique attributes
-Value (and proof)
-Target market characteristics
-Market category
Each component has a relationship with others.
Your attributes are unique when compared with competitive alternatives.
Privacy and security features of ProtonMail in comparison with Gmail.
These attributes drive the value, which determines your best target customers.
ProtonMail provides users freedom, thus making privacy-focused individuals its target customers.
It then highlights which market frame of reference highlights your value best.
The more service provider offers freedom, the better it gets for its users.
Your best-fit customers hold the key to understanding what your product is.
ProtonMail is what it’s perceived by privacy-focused individuals.
Bridge the gap between understanding the product as product creators and as customers.
Prospects are more interested in privacy than security, as security leads to privacy.
The customer’s opinion is the only one that matters for positioning.
It makes privacy the focus of alternative service providers to Google & Microsoft.
Positioning is how customers view your product compared to other solutions.
ProtonMail is the champion of privacy and freedom if it’s compared with Gmail.
The differentiation between ProtonMail and Tuta is challenging, as both target privacy-focused individuals.
Understand what the customer might replace you with and understand how they categorize your solution.
Tuta can replace ProtonMail, it makes the latter a privacy-focused service provider.
Customers care about what the features can do for them.
Features -> Benefits -> Value
Security -> Privacy -> Freedom
Take the most critical things that make you special and bring the resulting unique value to the front.
It’s privacy and freedom for ProtonMail.
Target as narrow as you can to meet your near-term sales objectives.
ProtonMail targets privacy-focused individuals.
You can broaden the targets later.
It can compete with Gmail head-on later.
Your segment needs to have specific and unmet needs.
Gmail lacked privacy-focused services.
Crave off a piece of the market to give your product an edge over the category leader.
The privacy and security features of ProtonMail gave it a competitive advantage.
Dominating a smaller market is easier than taking on a leader.
ProtonMail or any new player can’t attack Gmail head-on.
A niche of privacy-focused individuals can help it target the market leader later.
Show the gap between the market leader’s general solution and your specialized one.
ProtonMail highlights its privacy and security features on its website.
Without effective positioning, it’s hard to differentiate your product and sell it.
P.S. I would choose Tuta over ProtonMail.
What option do you favor?