How to Use Positioning to Own Your Market

Become a big fish in your pond

Of all the marketing strategy lessons we at Chief Outsiders share with founders and business leaders, positioning ranks among the most critical. It truly is a difference-maker for businesses that wish to become the leader of the pack—to become, in fishing parlance, the big fish in your pond.

But how do you go about achieving this top-level market mastery? It starts with a keen understanding about how you scale your business and execute on your go-to-market plans. Ramping revenue and scaling operations before you've defined a unique and sustainable market positioning can be very risky in the long term.

At a more granular level, we need to understand: Is your initial target customer segment the right target (think ideal customer profile, or ICP) for your business that permits the greatest product-market fit and long-term growth opportunity?

The person who wrote the "book" on product/market fit, Marc Andreessen, defined it as solving a market problem at scale and went as far to say it is "the only thing that matters."

This determination of your initial customer target segment is an important discussion, because it becomes the pond for you to dominate or lead. Equally important is the solution you develop for your target customer. If you tailor your solution specifically to that segment, you risk:

• Over-engineering the solution required to serve and scale to a broader market. The classic "innovator's dilemma," posited by Clay Christensen in his book of the same title.

• Overlooking the unique positioning opportunity to define and own your own pond.

• Defining too narrowly or too broadly a value proposition to compete effectively and grow.

The permutations on customer and solution are endless.

How do you avoid this trap? It starts by defining your business, customer, and unique proposition, and then creating a unique story you can own—call it your brand. It's the perfect way to be the big fish in a pond that you decide you can dominate and lead in order to build your company.

At Chief Outsiders, we love the big fish/small pond approach for B2B tech strategy. Turns out that authors you might know, like Geoffrey Moore (of "Crossing the Chasm" fame) do as well. Mr. Moore would counsel that you should be known for something specific. Once you achieve that position (or rung on the ladder inside your customers' mind), it will be difficult to unseat you. Once someone gains top-of-mind status, they're hard to supplant. For example: When you're about to sneeze, don't you always ask for a Kleenex®, regardless of the brand at hand?

What We Can Learn From Startups

Consider for a moment the lesson of startups. While the specific failure rates have evolved, the core challenge remains consistent. Companies that race to revenue without a clear definition of their business, their unique solution, and their target customer, or market positioning, continue to struggle at alarming rates.

It's all about the trust you build with your buying audience, which is fundamental to that buyer's psychology. You have the opportunity to drive every conversation through the way you present yourself. We advise clients to position carefully, establishing your company as a unique and trusted long-term solution for a known market/customer problem, rather than a reaction to a short-term challenge. Tell your unique story believably and credibly, in their language, and you begin to define your pond as focused, smaller, and relevant; and a pond within which you can be a player or leader.

The New Reality: AI Is Shopping Before Your Buyers Call

Here's what's shifted: your positioning now needs to work in AI-assisted buyer journeys. If your positioning isn't clear, consistent, and discoverable across your digital presence, you're being filtered out before the conversation starts. AI tools scrape your website, LinkedIn presence, customer reviews, and media mentions to build their answers. Inconsistent messaging or vague positioning means you either don't show up or get misrepresented.

This doesn't replace the fundamentals of positioning. It reinforces why they matter. Being a big fish in a small pond is more valuable than ever—but now you need to make sure both humans and machines understand which pond you're in.

Define Your Pond Through Simple Exclusivity

You must define your company and your value proposition in an exclusive way before you can communicate anything to customers. Your story disappears when it isn't unique or is too complicated for customers to understand, or both.

In his book, "Positioning," Al Reis states it succinctly: "The best approach to take in an over-communicated society is an oversimplified message. In communication, as in architecture, less is more."

That advice, written decades ago, has never been more relevant. In 2026, you're competing not just for human attention, but for clarity in AI-summarized vendor comparisons. Complex positioning gets lost. Simple, focused positioning cuts through.

How do you apply Reis' reasoning to your specific instance? Solve a need your consumer knows they have now, so you can earn the right to solve other needs subsequently that they may not yet have identified. Do this right by keeping things simple, because simple can still be powerful.

Everything you communicate today across all your marketing channels will echo for years to come—and will be parsed by AI tools your buyers are using to make decisions. A single, consistent, specific, and relevant story puts you in an optimal position to be considered a big fish in a small pond. Define your pond, and dominate it.