Anthony Pierri has a knack for taking complex ideas and turning them into clear, compelling messages. As the co-founder of Fletch PMM, Anthony has helped over 300 companies (mostly in SaaS), refine their positioning to stand out in competitive markets.
This week on Minimum Viable Podcast, Anthony spoke to the tricky balance between strategy and execution, and how even the best product ideas can fizzle out if they aren’t communicated clearly.
In this episode, we get real granular on how Anthony helped us at GC reshape our homepage messaging, the common pitfalls companies face when positioning their products, and why staying focused on core features is key. Anthony also talks about the importance of internal alignment and how to avoid losing sight of your strategy during the design process.
If you have a homepage that needs a little cleaning up, I’d suggest watching the full episode here:
Below are some of Anthony’s key strategies on positioning products for success from our interview:
Anthony Pierri: I really specialize in product positioning, especially for homepages. There are many people who do positioning more broadly, but what we’ve found is that a lot of positioning work—things like PowerPoint decks with strategy—ends up in a Google Drive folder somewhere and never sees the light of day. That’s one bad outcome.
The other bad outcome is when you try to go from strategy to execution, and in that handoff, you lose the differentiation. Copy gets tweaked, positioning gets changed, and suddenly everything feels vague again. We focus on keeping that clarity alive, especially for early-stage SaaS companies. We’ve done this so many times that I think we’ve become experts at it—especially when it comes to homepages.
Anthony Pierri: It becomes an issue because making abstract decisions is easy until they have real implications. When you see the strategy in a wireframe or a homepage, people start getting scared. We often say there are two moments of crisis: first, when people realize there’s no silver bullet for targeting 20 different markets—they have to make tough decisions and prioritize. The second crisis happens when they see the positioning in action and realize those choices will actually impact the copy. Suddenly, they don’t like it and start walking back their decisions. It often manifests as, “I don’t like the copy,” when in reality, they’re backing out of a strategic decision.
Anthony Pierri: There's always tension between content and design because they serve different functions. Designers want things to look good, and sometimes that means changing the copy to fit the design. But the problem with that is you can lose the essence of the message in the process. If you're not careful, small design changes lead to tweaks in the content that remove the core differentiators. It’s critical to balance both without sacrificing the message.
Anthony Pierri: When I first saw the General Collaboration homepage, I actually thought it was clearer than about 90% of what I typically see. Your hero section had strong copy and was pretty clear about the product. But what was missing was a product visualization in the hero—something that shows exactly what users will be working with.
In a product-led growth (PLG) approach, that’s critical. Beyond that, there was also the issue of how you were ordering information. For example, the integrations section, while important, was positioned too high on the page. It’s something that usually comes after you’ve explained what the product does and how it works. So, we didn’t have to do a wholesale shift—just tighten up and better organize the messaging.
Anthony Pierri: The biggest pitfall is trying to appeal to too many audiences - you're going to dilute your message. You need to make hard choices and prioritize. Another is focusing too much on features without making it clear why those features matter. You have to be relentlessly focused on answering four key questions: What is it? Who is it for? What does it replace? Why is it better? If you lose sight of those, your message becomes vague, and your positioning loses its punch.
Anthony Pierri: We really focused on highlighting the comment aggregation feature. That was the core of the product but wasn’t coming through clearly enough in the original copy. We worked on bringing that front and center and used it to anchor the rest of the messaging. The goal was to make it very clear that this is what GC does—it aggregates comments across different apps and makes it easier to manage them. Once we had that locked in, everything else fell into place.
Anthony Pierri: When it comes to positioning, specificity is key. You need to focus on one strong, clear value proposition that people can immediately understand. Comment aggregation is something people can grasp quickly, and it’s a feature that solves a real problem. If you try to spread yourself too thin and talk about too many features, you risk confusing your audience. But when you focus on a single, strong feature, you make it easier for people to connect with your product.
