Positioning Clarity Index
A weighted composite index on your positioning clarity. Rate yourself across five dimensions; the calculator produces a 0–100 score plus a band-level interpretation.
Who it’s for: PMMs and CMOs who want a single number to anchor a positioning conversation with leadership — more defensible than an intuition, less expensive than an audit.
- 01
Rate the category label in your hero. 10 = a term buyers use unprompted. 1 = invented, unsearched, or internal jargon.
Invented5Canonical - 02
10 = a claim backed by a number, a proprietary method, or a specific capability. 1 = copy-pasteable virtues (faster, smarter, easier).
Generic5Proprietary - 03
10 = proof points match the exact claim in the headline. 1 = proof is a generic 'trusted by' stripe unrelated to the claim.
Mismatched5Tightly matched - 04
10 = you can state a clear disqualifier without hedging. 1 = 'mid-market B2B' is your whole ICP.
Diffuse5Sharp - 05
10 = same category, same claim, same ICP across all three. 1 = each surface was written by a different team and it shows.
Drifted5Aligned
Buyers figure you out, but it takes two reads. In a crowded category, that's where deals get lost to the vendor with the sharper story — not the better product.
Read it honestly, not charitably.
The index is a weighted composite, not a simple average. Differentiator specificity and category clarity carry more weight because they compound faster — a ten-point drop on differentiator costs more than a ten-point drop on surface consistency, because consistency issues are fixable in a week and a weak differentiator takes a quarter.
Watch the spread, not just the score. A team with all fives gets a 50 — so does a team with two tens and three ones, but the latter is a very different operating problem. If your spread is wide, the low dimensions are where a single focused sprint will move the whole score. If it’s narrow, you have a systemic drift problem, not a specific weakness.
One honest read: score yourself the way a skeptical colleague would. The index is only as useful as the candor of the self-report.
Three moves you can make this week.
- Move 01
Pair this with the Positioning Clarity Checklist — the checklist shows you the specific failure modes behind each dimension, the index gives you the tracking number to share upward.
- Move 02
If your lowest dimension is category or differentiator, read the Competitive Differentiation cluster. If it’s consistency, start with the Message Consistency cluster.
- Move 03
Run a free Positioning Audit and compare the Stratridge score to your self-report. The delta is where your team is over- or under-reading its own work.
Why these questions, in this order.
Single-number composites are cheating. Positioning is multi-dimensional, and reducing it to one score loses resolution. But single numbers also travel — they fit on a slide, they enter a QBR, they get attached to an OKR. The trade we’re making with this index is lower fidelity for higher portability.
The five dimensions are ordered by how long they take to fix. Category (top) is a quarters-long commitment; consistency (bottom) is a week’s work. That ordering is also the weighting: weaknesses higher in the list cost more because they compound longer before they can be repaired.
What the index can’t see: your market. A positioning that scores 90 on this index against the wrong category is still wrong. Use the index to measure communication quality, not strategic correctness — for the latter, a positioning brief and an outside read remain the right tools.
Run the full Positioning Audit.
Eight-lens diagnostic of your site against your own strategic intent.