Every term the industry gets wrong.
This isn't a reference book. Each entry has three movements: the orthodoxy (what most people say), where it breaks (the lazy assumption), and the STFO working definition (what a practitioner actually needs).
Alternatives
Alternatives are the different paths or solutions available to people in your segment to reach their goal. They are far broader than competitors. They include indirect competition, makeshift solutions, DIY approaches, and doing nothing. If you only look at direct competitors, you're blind to the real landscape.
Blue Ocean Strategy
Most 'blue oceans' are blue because nobody wants to swim there. Uncontested market space usually means zero demand. Position in a category where demand already exists and stand out by solving ignored struggles, not by inventing a market nobody asked for.
Capture Market Share
Gaining market share through marketing is a statistical fantasy. Decades of data across thousands of categories show that relative market share is extremely stable over years, even decades. Most 'brand growth' is just revenue growth from a category that's expanding on its own.
Category
A category is the group of things that solve similar struggles in a similar way. It is the most underused positioning lever. You cannot create demand from thin air. Pick a category where demand already exists and your segment already understands what you do.
Category Creation
Category creation is for the 0.01%. For everyone else, trying to create a category means trying to create demand, and you cannot create demand. It's a force of nature, not a growth-hacking campaign. Position in a category where demand already exists.
Competitor
The word 'competitor' narrows your thinking to companies that look like you. Your customers don't think in categories. They think in goals. 'Alternatives' is the bigger, more honest frame: it includes direct rivals, indirect solutions, DIY workarounds, and doing nothing.
Continuous Reach
Continuous reach means getting in front of the right people at the right time with the right stuff, as often as your budget allows. It is the fourth stage of the STFO methodology, built on three elements: triggers, channels, and offers. Loyalty marketing is overrated. Light buyers matter more than you think.
Demand Generation
Most 'demand generation' is actually demand capture: targeting the 5% of buyers who are actively looking. Real demand generation is the 95% work. Staying visible so you're already on the shortlist when the trigger hits. That's continuous reach, not a pipeline campaign.
Differentiation
Differentiation in B2B is the practice of solving specific problems that alternatives leave unsolved for a specific group of people. Being different for the sake of it is a fool's errand. The difference must address an ignored struggle that your segment actually cares about.
Distinctive Brand Assets
Distinctive brand assets are the meaning-free bits and bobs that make your brand uniquely yours. A colour, shape, sound, mascot, or phrase. The goal is to tickle different parts of the brain without competing with all the other crap floating around in people's heads. Meaningful logos are overrated.
Distinctiveness
Distinctiveness is what makes your brand noticed, remembered, and shortlisted when buyers are ready to act. It is not the same as differentiation. Differentiation gives people a reason to choose you. Distinctiveness gives people a reason to remember you. You need one or the other. Ideally both.
Forces of Inertia
Inertia is what keeps buyers stuck with their current alternatives, even when those alternatives are failing them. 'Doing nothing' is a valid competitor when someone has already tried and given up. Most marketing ignores inertia entirely, which is why it fails to convert people who should be buying.
Forces of Progress
The forces of progress model explains why people switch (or don't). Push of the current situation, pull of the new solution, habit of the present, and anxiety of the new. Louis's framework addresses the same dynamics through triggers (what makes people move) and ignored struggles (what alternatives fail to solve).
Go-to-Market (GTM)
In the STFO framework, a GTM strategy is the plan for continuous reach: triggers (when people act), channels (where to meet them), and offers (what to give them). It is not a product launch plan. It is not a deck of tactics. It's the system that turns positioning and brand into revenue.
Growth Hacking
Growth hacking culture is the monster. The 'you're just one funnel away' gurus erode your confidence by design, making you feel stupid so you buy their quick fixes. A sales funnel is not a business. Foundations matter. Selling stuff to people is hard. It's meant to be hard.
ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)
An ICP should describe people by their shared struggles and context, not their demographics or firmographics. Most ICPs are demographic reverse-engineering of current customers. A real ICP is built on who brings you revenue, who you can actually reach, who is growing, and who you enjoy working with.
Ignored Struggles
Ignored struggles are the super-frustrating problems that prevent a certain group of people from getting a job done, which the competition isn't solving well. They are the core of meaningful differentiation. Not pain points. Not feature gaps. Real problems that alternatives leave on the table.
Insight Foraging
Insight foraging is the practice of uncovering raw, unfiltered truths about your customers by learning exclusively from people who have recently invested resources to address the problem you solve. Most customer research produces poisonous insights. Insight foraging produces juicy ones.
Irrational Struggles
Irrational struggles are the emotional and often subconscious problems that prevent people from getting a job done. They are the juiciest kind of struggle because big companies tend to see people as rational decision-makers, which means they overlook the irrationality of human behaviour. Start with the irrational ones.
Jobs to Be Done (JTBD)
JTBD is a theory that people 'hire' products to fulfil needs in their lives. Louis uses the job as one of six insight types in the STFO framework. But JTBD alone is product-centric. It tells you the goal. It doesn't tell you which obstacles on the way to that goal are being ignored by the alternatives. That's where ignored struggles come in.
Lead Generation
The word 'lead' tells you everything. They're humans with ignored struggles, not leads in a funnel. A sales funnel is not a business. Neither is an offer. Or an ad campaign. Selling stuff to people is hard. It takes time. It's meant to be hard.
Meaningful Differentiation
Meaningful differentiation is solving ignored struggles for a specific segment in a way that alternatives don't. It is the opposite of cosmetic differentiation (a different pricing page, a clever tagline). Byron Sharp was right that perceived differentiation is useless. He was wrong to stop there.
Mental Availability
Mental availability is the probability that a buyer will think of your brand in a buying situation. It is the combined result of distinctive brand assets (Stage 3) and continuous reach (Stage 4). Most B2B companies ignore it because they're too busy chasing the 5% of buyers who are actively looking.
Moat
Most companies don't have a moat. They have a temporary advantage. Calling it a moat is cope. In the STFO framework, competitive advantage comes from solving ignored struggles, building distinctive assets, and showing up continuously. It's an ongoing practice, not a wall.
Niche
The way most people are taught about niching is a trap. Defining your niche by industry or demographics squeezes you into a box so small your creativity dies. A niche should be defined by shared struggles, not superficial differences. That's what a segment is.
Personal Brand
It's not a brand. It's a reputation. 'Brand' implies manufactured. 'Reputation' implies earned. Jon Goodman didn't build a personal brand. He stopped hiding, developed strong POVs, and showed up relentlessly. The brand was a byproduct, not the goal.
Point of View (POV)
A point of view is a collection of consistent messages inserted into everything you do and say, showing your segment you're committed to protecting them. It is not thought leadership. It is not random opinions. It is a coherent signal that transforms random acts of marketing into a narrative.
Positioning
Positioning is the upstream work of understanding how you address customer challenges that others overlook. It is built on five elements: job, alternatives, struggles, segment, and category. It is not a tagline exercise. The words come last, not first.
Product-Led Growth (PLG)
PLG is a distribution motion, not a strategy. You can be product-led and have zero positioning. The product can be the channel for acquisition, but if you haven't nailed who you serve, what struggles you solve, and why you're different, PLG just distributes confusion at scale.
Product-Market Fit
Product-market fit pretends to be binary: you have it or you don't. In reality, it's a spectrum. Most companies at 'PMF' are actually at 'one segment fit.' And even that shifts as markets evolve. The real question isn't whether you've found fit. It's whether you've found the ignored struggles worth building around.
Segment
A segment is a group of people with similar ignored struggles that you can serve in a way that gives you a distinct advantage against alternatives. It is not a demographic profile. It is not a persona. It is built on shared struggles, not superficial differences.
Target Audience
Target audience is war vocabulary applied to humans. The word 'target' implies you talk at people. The word 'audience' implies they sit and listen. Neither is true. Replace it with segment: a group of people with shared ignored struggles you can serve with a distinct advantage.
The Mental Shortlist
B2B buyers buy from brands already on their mental shortlist by the time they search. If you're not in their head before the trigger hits, you don't exist when it matters. The entire inbound industry needs reframing: the goal isn't to capture searchers, it's to be remembered before they search.
Thought Leadership
Nobody credible self-describes as a thought leader. If you have to call yourself one, you're not. The term produces either hermit crabs hiding in their shells or intellectual terrorists shouting into the void. Replace it with a point of view: a structured, consistent signal that protects your segment.
Triggers
Triggers are events or situations that motivate people to make progress towards their goals. People behave like TNT: stable, inert, won't explode unless something specific sets them off. Triggers are not pain points. They are precise moments in time that create the boom.
Unique Positioning
Unique positioning is the intersection of job, alternatives, struggles, segment, and category. Each element alone is not unique. The intersection is. The output is a statement that describes your meaningful difference, built for internal clarity, not as a homepage headline.
Unique Value Proposition (UVP)
A UVP is a statement claiming why customers should choose you. The problem: most UVPs assert uniqueness without earning it. Ten thousand competitors claim the same thing. The work happens upstream in positioning, not in the sentence itself.
Viral Content
Virality is survivorship bias wearing a suit. You can't engineer viral. You can engineer distinctive. Netflix's Adolescence didn't go viral because someone optimised for the algorithm. It went viral because the intensity was cranked to 100%. The strategy is continuous reach, not virality.
The Stand The F*ck Out framework, introduced by Louis Grenier in 2024, consists of four stages: insight foraging, unique positioning, distinctive brand, and continuous reach.