Positioning Products That Are Hard to Market: How to Build Demand in a Skeptical World

Most founders and marketing leaders struggle to position products that are technical, new, or sold into a skeptical market. They spend endless hours refining messaging, tweaking websites, and chasing "brand awareness" that never seems to translate into revenue. Now tear it down. The problem isn't your messaging. It’s your strategic frame.

Positioning isn't what you say about your product. It’s which competitive set you choose to play in, and that choice determines everything: your price, your buyer, and the urgency they feel to solve their problem. As Grow and Convert points out, "Positioning Is the Part of “Product Market Fit” You're Likely Ignoring." Incorrect positioning is often misdiagnosed as a marketing problem, but it’s a go-to-market problem that requires a strategic pivot, not just a branding exercise.

When a product is genuinely hard to market—whether it’s a groundbreaking technology, a service in a nascent category, or something that demands a behavior shift—you can't rely on existing search intent. You have to engineer demand. That means fundamentally reshaping the market context, redefining your competitive frame, and uncovering the true customer need through rigorous, data-driven discovery. It’s about transforming vague "complaints" into urgent, quantifiable "pains" that buyers must solve.

The First Wedge: Redefining Your Competitive Frame

When you have a highly technical product, the default is often to talk about features. That’s a mistake. Instead, change the frame entirely. Shift the competitive set. This isn’t about changing your technology; it’s about changing how the market perceives its purpose and its peers. This is what I call the Repositioning / Competitive-Frame Shift play.

I lived this at Therma / GlacierGrid. The company was operating as a niche refrigeration-monitoring solution, battling in a crowded, commoditized space. They needed to raise a Series A, but the existing narrative wasn’t cutting it. My mandate was a complete overhaul of the business model and sales strategy.

We repositioned the company from a simple niche monitor to an energy grid-responsive platform. We built a narrative around a "smart-cooling platform that turns cooling and refrigeration into a battery." This wasn’t just a new tagline. We redefined which competitive set Therma played in, shifting from mere temperature monitoring against other sensors to intelligent energy management against larger, more strategic infrastructure plays.

This shift unlocked a new level of buyer urgency and budget. We weren't selling a gadget; we were selling a strategic asset for energy efficiency and operational resilience. This repositioning helped secure a $19M Series A for Therma. The lesson is clear: positioning isn't about what you say; it's about the competitive arena you choose, and that choice determines your value, your price, and your buyer's urgency.

For complex tools or nascent technologies, this competitive-frame shift is non-negotiable. Buyers default to what they already know, and if your innovation doesn’t fit neatly into an existing, well-understood category, they will try to force it into a commoditized one. They will compare your cutting-edge solution to the cheapest, most basic alternative, simply because they lack a better mental model. This is partly why complex tools often see product adoption rates between 50-70%, as noted by Guideflow — the friction of understanding and integrating a new paradigm is a real barrier. Your job is to create that new mental model.

The mechanism of a successful competitive-frame shift involves not just explaining what you do, but why it matters differently from anything else. It's about drawing a new boundary around your solution, clearly articulating who you are not and what problem you solve that traditional competitors cannot. This is particularly critical when facing buyer skepticism. Consumers, for instance, are increasingly wary of opaque recommendations; a 2026 Billion Dollar Boy study found only 35% agree AI delivers high-quality product recommendations, and 63% are uncomfortable with AI using their browsing history. While your product might not be AI, this highlights a broader trust deficit towards new or complex technologies that don't clearly articulate their value and ethics.

This approach echoes the strategy of Palo Alto Networks. When they launched their "Next Generation Firewall" as a startup, they faced immense skepticism in a mature cybersecurity market. Instead of simply listing technical specifications and competing on features with incumbents, they developed messaging that didn't just explain their product; it re-categorized the entire firewall market. They didn't just offer a better firewall; they created the standard for what a modern firewall should be. Their spectacular messaging piqued curiosity by focusing on solving critical, unaddressed problems, directly bypassing the initial distrust that often greets new entrants. This allowed them to redefine the firewall category and grow into one of the largest cybersecurity companies globally. They weren’t selling a better mousetrap; they were selling a new pest control paradigm.

A competitive-frame shift isn’t exclusive to disrupting a tech category. It’s about reshaping perception. Consider Caterpillar. For its centennial campaign, they successfully repositioned themselves from a legacy industrial brand to an innovation leader. Their "The Next 100 Years" narrative wasn't just a nod to their past; it signaled ongoing evolution and a forward-looking vision. They tackled the common B2B challenge of maintaining relevance while honoring tradition by framing their future. This isn't just about updating a logo; it's about altering the market’s understanding of your core identity and ongoing value.

Earning trust and simplifying complex messages are paramount. As the Forbes Communications Council advises, strategies for complex tech include simplifying messaging, using visuals, and leveraging storytelling. Senior Executive further emphasizes that in a digitally saturated market, brands need human ownership of messages and specific proof to earn trust from increasingly skeptical buyers. A strong competitive-frame shift provides that clear, authoritative narrative. It defines your unique value proposition in a way that resonates with a deep, unaddressed need, making your solution feel not just innovative, but indispensable. You are not just entering a market; you are defining its future.

The Empathy Wedge: Uncovering the *Real* Buyer and Their *True* Pain

It’s easy to make assumptions about who your customer is. You might start with a demographic profile or a perceived market need. But more often than not, your initial assumptions are wrong. The data and the reviews will tell you who actually buys and, more importantly, why. Don't let opinion or anecdote override evidence.

When I joined Cubii as the first marketing hire, the company was post-Kickstarter and fighting for survival. The early bet had been to target trendy millennials, but the unit economics were unsustainable. We were spending on Facebook and Google faster than the revenue was coming in, and the landing page was a conversion graveyard.

I dug into the data, the CRM, and hundreds of customer reviews. It was glaringly obvious: the real buyer wasn’t a millennial. It was 30-to-60-year-olds stuck at a desk, needing to move for their health, or recovering from surgery. These were people with a real, tangible problem, often pain-driven.

Instead of fighting internal opinions with more opinions, I proved the case with data. I built a Shadow Funnel: a parallel, fully trackable set of Instapage landing pages. This allowed us to validate the new customer thesis with real-world data and separate it from the core brand. Failure stayed contained, and success was measurable. We turned actual customer reviews – like a 55-year-old recovering from knee surgery or a desk worker whose back was seizing – into landing page copy. This resonated because it spoke directly to the customer’s situation, in their own words, far more effectively than any generic aspirational messaging.

This shift was a game-changer. We helped scale the DTC engine from near-zero to an eight-figure annual run rate in about 18 months. We turned the unit economics from burning cash to profitable within about two months, holding a healthy ~3x LTV:CAC. We also built an Email Treasury—a 100,000+ opt-in email list converting to revenue at ~8%, segmented by their initial trigger.

This is the essence of Empathy-Driven Growth: grounding your strategy in the customer's emotional decision moment. The customer is rarely who you first assume. The data and reviews will reveal who actually buys and, crucially, what their One-Person ICP looks like.

Complaints vs. Pains: A Critical Distinction

Here’s a diagnostic: if your prospects haven't tried to solve a problem, or budgeted for it, it’s not a pain. It's a complaint. People talk about complaints. They pay to make pains go away.

A good example comes from B2B buyer behavior. Research shows that B2B buyers are incredibly diligent when they have a real pain. There's a 47% chance a B2B buyer will view at least 3 to 5 pieces of content before engaging with a sales team, and 37% read a whitepaper during their journey, according to Growbo. This isn't casual browsing; it’s intense research driven by an urgent need—a pain they intend to solve. The median B2B conversion rate across all industries was 2.9% in 2025 (Martal Group), indicating that even with this intense research, the funnel is still tight. If your prospects aren’t doing this level of deep dive, you’re likely addressing a complaint, not a pain.

Your positioning needs to hit a pain so deeply felt that it drives this kind of behavior. If it doesn't, you need to dig deeper into discovery or elevate the stakes. This isn't about making your product sound more exciting; it's about connecting it to an existential problem for your customer.

The Urgency Wedge: Elevating Pain from "Complaint" to "Critical"

Once you understand your customer's true pain, your next move is to elevate it. Most products sell to Level 2 or 3 pain, which is 'problematic' or 'costly.' But the real budget, the real urgency, and the real growth come from Level 3-4 pain: 'risk' and 'survival.' This is the Pain Ladder Elevation play.

At Therma / GlacierGrid, after we redefined the competitive frame, we had to redefine the buyer’s pain. Initially, the pain point was often a Level 2: "equipment sometimes breaks," a nuisance. We needed to elevate that.

Here’s how we did it:

• Quantified the Cost of Inaction: We moved from "equipment sometimes breaks" to "an unplanned outage costs your business $X per hour in lost inventory and revenue, plus regulatory fines." This is Level 3 pain – 'costly.' We connected technical failures directly to the CFO’s ledger, shifting from a maintenance issue to a significant financial drain.
• Personalized the Stakes and Showed Competitive Pressure: We then moved to Level 4 pain: "Your regional director evaluates you on uptime, and the Shake Shack down the street just installed predictive maintenance—they’re not losing product, and they’re hitting their numbers while you’re not." Now the pain is not just about cost; it’s about personal risk and competitive survival. It becomes a career-defining problem. This is what Level 4 pain looks like. This is where budget appears because the problem is no longer optional.

We then rebuilt the qualification criteria, defined entirely new ICPs for the new product, and rebuilt the lead-scoring model, nurture sequences, and SDR talk tracks around them. This ensured we were attracting and converting buyers at this higher level of pain, speaking their language of risk and competitive advantage. We didn't just change the words; we changed the entire sales playbook.

The result? We engineered a 600% increase in marketing-driven Sales Qualified Leads and cut customer acquisition cost by 60% through channel restructuring and ICP refinement. We also increased website engagement by 1,200% by speaking directly to these elevated pains in our content strategy. We implemented a formal marketing-sales SLA on a single definition of 'qualified,' establishing a feedback loop that refined our targeting every week, ensuring sales and marketing were aligned on the critical pains that truly drove revenue.

Remember: Level 3-4 pain has a budget, a timeline, and an owner. Everything else is just a conversation. Your job is to make that conversation about survival.

Engineering Demand Where None Exists: Category Creation

What happens when your product is so new that no one is even searching for it? An empty search result is a death sentence if you're only focused on intent capture. This is where category creation becomes demand creation. You can’t just explain; you have to build trust and community as your core growth levers.

At CodaPet, we face this daily. We’re building the first national in-home pet euthanasia marketplace—a brand-new category. People don't know to search for "at-home pet euthanasia marketplace" when their pet is suffering. It’s an emotionally weighted, high-trust, high-consideration service across 170+ markets in 50+ states, with a lean marketing team. We have one full-time lead (me) and a few contractors, using agencies and AI as leverage. This is far from a large in-house department.

Here's how we're positioning a service no one knows to search for, by building demand rather than capturing it:

1. Local Presence Machine: We built out 200+ fully optimized Google Business Profiles (GBPs), one per market/practitioner. Each GBP acts as a local storefront in the digital world. The mechanism isn't just creating them; it's the automated, operational events that trigger location-specific (never duplicate) content. For example, when a new vet joins a market, or a service update occurs, relevant, localized content is automatically published to that specific GBP. We track impressions per profile diligently, understanding that local search visibility is paramount. Our reviews function as a ranking engine, with automated, event-triggered requests ensuring a consistent stream of new, positive social proof. In emotionally weighted categories, trust and community are not soft extras—they are the growth strategy. Each positive review builds local authority and credibility where it matters most: directly in Google Search and Maps when a family needs help, offering immediate validation for a service that is often chosen under duress. This isn't just SEO; it's trust architecture.
2. Performance-Tier Paid Search: We restructured Google Ads into a performance-tier system, leaning heavily into Performance Max where it dramatically out-converted traditional Search campaigns. This allowed us to efficiently acquire demand while our organic channels built equity. Performance Max, when properly trained with the right conversion signals, proved exceptionally effective at finding urgent demand even within a nascent category, outperforming keyword-driven search campaigns that were reliant on low-volume, emerging search terms. We cut blended paid CPA about 27% while sustaining strong ROAS, with Performance Max far outperforming Search. This enabled us to maintain efficient acquisition while we systematically cultivated owned channels.
3. 80/20 Reverse: Owned > Rented: Our channel mix is intentionally built to drive about 80% of revenue through non-paid channels. Paid acquisition is rent; owned channels are equity. This strategy keeps our blended CAC low and insulates the business from any single platform's algorithm changes. Our organic clicks grew roughly 5x and impressions +314% in about a year, proving the power of compounding owned channels. This focus on equity-building channels like SEO, local SEO (via GBPs), and direct traffic means that every effort we make today continues to pay dividends long into the future, creating a defensible position in a new category. We prioritize content that answers deep, emotional questions, builds authority, and serves as a trusted resource, rather than chasing fleeting trends.

Through these compounding systems, we grew monthly revenue roughly 225% from baseline and scaled into an eight-figure annual run rate. This proves that a lean team, with the right strategy and system engineering, can create and dominate a category from scratch.

This is Empathy-Driven Growth in action. You're not just selling a service; you're building a trusted resource during a moment of profound emotional need. That trust is your ultimate positioning advantage.

A Diagnostic: Is Your Positioning Actually Working?

Before you write another line of copy, ask these questions. Be brutal with your answers.

1. Who are you really competing with? If your answer is "no one," you either have a revolutionary product or no clear value proposition. Identify the existing alternatives, even if they're indirect (e.g., doing nothing, solving it manually, using an excel sheet). This defines your competitive set. If you don't know your rivals, you don't know your value.
2. Is your core promise understood in 5 seconds? Test it. Show your positioning to five strangers. If they can’t tell you what you do and who it's for, you're not clear. Your One Promise should be specific and measurable, written in the customer's language. Cut the jargon.
3. Is your buyer’s pain a Level 3 or 4? Are they actively searching for solutions, or have they budgeted to solve this problem? If not, you’re addressing a complaint. Your positioning needs to elevate that pain to a critical, urgent problem.
4. Do you have a Proof Stack for your promise? Specific named results are gold. Case studies, testimonials, logos, and credentials follow in decreasing order of impact. If you're only showing logos, you're not demonstrating enough value for a hard-to-market product. You need to show how you solve the problem, not just who you've worked with.
5. Are you building compounding owned channels or just renting reach? If 100% of your growth depends on paid media, your positioning is fragile. True positioning builds equity, creating assets that deliver value over time.

Stop focusing on awareness; start engineering revenue. Math over magic. Great marketing is a repeatable formula—test what works, scale it, repeat.

Key Takeaways

• Positioning is a strategic market move, not just messaging: Redefine your competitive set to shift perceived value and urgency, especially for complex or new offerings.
• Find the real buyer in the data: Your initial assumptions are often wrong. Use a Shadow Funnel to validate customer insights with real numbers, focusing on who actually converts and why.
• Elevate pain from complaint to critical: Use the Pain Ladder Elevation to ensure you're addressing Level 3-4 pains that command budget and immediate action, not just superficial complaints.
• Category creation is demand creation: When no one is searching, build trust and community through owned channels like the Local Presence Machine to educate the market and establish authority.
• Compounding systems build equity: Focus on owned channels over rented reach to create sustainable, resilient growth and a defensible market position.

Frequently Asked Questions

What makes a product "hard to market"?

Products are hard to market when they are technically complex, operate in a new or nascent category with no existing search demand, or require significant behavior change, often leading to buyer skepticism or misunderstanding. It's not about the product itself being "bad," but about the market's inability to immediately understand its value or fit.

How can I identify my "real" customer if my initial assumptions are wrong?

Dive into your existing data: CRM records, customer service interactions, and especially customer reviews. Look for patterns in who buys, their specific use cases, and the problems they articulate in their own words. Test new hypotheses with a Shadow Funnel to validate with real conversion data, ensuring your insights are grounded in actual behavior, not just surveys or focus groups.

What is the "Pain Ladder," and how do I use it?

The Pain Ladder categorizes customer pain from minor annoyance (Level 1) to critical survival threat (Level 4). To use it, identify your customer's current pain level and build your positioning to elevate it by quantifying costs, showing competitive pressure, or personalizing the stakes, moving them towards Level 3 ('costly') or Level 4 ('survival'). This makes the problem urgent and justifies budget.

What's the difference between rented reach and owned channels?

Rented reach refers to paid acquisition channels like social media ads or search engine marketing, where you pay for every impression or click. Once you stop paying, the reach disappears. Owned channels are assets you control, like your email list, SEO-optimized content, or local business profiles, which generate compounding returns and lower blended CAC over time because you control the distribution. Paid acquisition is rent; owned channels are equity.

Further Reading

• Grow and Convert: [https://growandconvert.com/positioning/product-market-fit-positioning/](https://growandconvert.com/positioning/product-market-fit-positioning/)
• Forbes Communications Council: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescommunicationscouncil/2024/09/16/how-to-explain-complex-tech-products-to-nontechnical-audiences/](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescommunicationscouncil/2024/09/16/how-to-explain-complex-tech-products-to-nontechnical-audiences/)
• Senior Executive: [https://seniorexecutive.com/articles/marketing-sales/how-brands-can-earn-trust-from-skeptical-buyers/](https://seniorexecutive.com/articles/marketing-sales/how-brands-can-earn-trust-from-skeptical-buyers/)