Strategic Positioning: How a Simple Image Change Boosted Market Share by 18%
Positioning is essential for a product's or service's success. Time and again, we see that a product with fewer features can outperform a more feature-rich competitor if it is positioned effectively. When two products offer similar capabilities, the one with stronger positioning is often seen as the category leader, while the other fades into obscurity.
A compelling example of positioning is the case of Diamond-shaped Shreddies. By simply changing the shape description and image from "square" to "diamond" on the packaging, the team increased market share by 18%—without altering the product itself. This illustrates the power of creativity and how a fresh perspective can significantly influence a customer’s perception, even for identical products.
Diamond Shreddies
You can also watch a bit longer version from Rory Sutherland's TED talk.
Positioning, alongside reframing value and leveraging psychology, is a powerful tool. It allows you to highlight your product's value and tap into customers' minds, keeping your offer top-of-mind.
As explained in the classic book Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind by Al Ries and Jack Trout, positioning is just as relevant today as it was in the 1970s.
Effective positioning applies not only to products and services but also to companies, cities, and even individuals. You don’t need to be a marketing expert to use it; understanding positioning can help you find unique ways to present your value.
For engineers and product developers, it’s tempting to focus solely on building new features, hoping customers will come. However, without weaving positioning into your strategy, even the best products can struggle. Positioning goes beyond the features; it requires understanding the customer’s perspective and aligning with how they see your offer in the market.
A classic example is Avis’s “We’re #2” campaign, which positioned them as a fierce competitor against the market leader. Similarly, well-positioned products with clear, memorable messaging tend to outperform even superior offerings that lack strategic positioning.
Every great product needs great positioning. Even a less impressive product that’s well-positioned can outshine a superior competitor. Clarify your offering, align it with your long-term vision, and make it memorable for customers. Successful positioning creates a lasting impression, making your offer not only memorable but also compelling.
Example: Positioning Hybr in the Market
From the start, our vision for Hybr was to simplify hybrid cloud management with a top-notch self-service portal and automation. Our mission is to make hybrid cloud easy and accessible, focusing on managing resources, tracking usage, and adding billing options. Broadly, our customers fall into two segments: Enterprise IT and Service Providers, each with similar needs that manifest differently (e.g., show-back vs. chargeback for resource costs).
As our customer base grew, service providers expressed the need for SaaS application provisioning and management (e.g., Microsoft CSP). They valued Hybr’s ability to unify cloud resources from various private cloud and on-premises platforms (such as VMware, Azure Stack HCI, and Veeam) into a single portal with multi-tenancy and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC). This led us to integrate Microsoft CSP, enabling similar provisioning capabilities for SaaS applications like Microsoft Office. While Hybr’s Metered Usage Billing Engine was designed for extensibility, integrating with Microsoft CSP required overcoming API stability issues and handling occasional bugs.
From a product perspective, Hybr has expanded in reach and applicability by supporting SaaS applications through Microsoft CSP. We were pioneers in the hybrid cloud space, offering solutions as early as 2014—well before the industry widely recognized the need for such services. We also led the charge on metered billing, providing pay-as-you-go experiences when prepaid models dominated the market.
In terms of positioning, our goal was not to chase industry buzzwords like Cloud Ops, FinOps, or Cloud Billing, but to create unique, meaningful positions for each product. Hybr VConnect™ has established as the comprehensive hybrid cloud solution with deeper integration to on-premises platforms, public cloud providers, combined with marketplace, automation, metering, billing and multi-tenancy features. On the SaaS Billing and Microsoft CSP, Hybr SaaS Biling has evolved into end-to-end Reseller Commerce Platform creating its own market category in the process.
The upcoming Minnal AI, powered by Hybr, offers game-changing, customizable AI solutions for service providers and IT teams. With one-click deployment and no need for major cloud providers, it delivers secure, edge-based AI at a fraction of the cost, even supporting fully offline platforms.
I take immense pride in Hybr, more than in any other product I’ve had the chance to contribute to. While we’ve come far, we still have work to do in solidifying each Hybr product line. I see this as an ongoing journey—a meaningful effort to capture customers’ attention and continually deliver greater value.
This journey didn’t happen by chance. My experience at Microsoft managing Services Management Platform and working on billing and metering for Azure services such as Azure Service Bus since 2009 informed Hybr’s direction. For instance, in my work with Azure App Service, I managed transitions to a new cloud deployment platform and oversaw both runtime and on-premises services. These experiences laid the groundwork for building a truly hybrid, multi-tenant solution like Hybr, offering global scalability and flexibility.
Ravi C. K.
Ravi C. K.
