Your business needs a positioning strategy for success

Does your message and the pitches for your product or service sound like everyone else’s? If so, you have a missing link in your business plan: your unique value positioning strategy. It’s a strategic gap that needs to be filled now.

A company’s positioning strategy is possibly the most important piece of their roadmap to success, yet usually neglected, if not totally overlooked.

Positioning is what comes to mind when your target market thinks about your brand, products, or services compared to your competitor’s offering. Taking this a step further, positioning shapes how your target audience perceives your business. Reality is perception.

Sounds simple. However, in practice creating a clear and concise positioning statement is not so easy. And, if you and your team don’t take the time to do this, three things are guaranteed to happen.

You’ll inadvertently create messaging that sounds the same as your competitors and places you at parity with them.

Your market and competitors will end up creating your position and value in the market for you.

And, you’ll never have a compelling reason for buyers to choose you over the competition or do anything different from what they’re doing today -- their status quo.

Laying out the major difference your business offers, that is both valuable and believable compared to competitive offerings, is the foundation for all customer-facing strategies and tactics.

Plus, a unique value positioning statement is the basis of all internal and external communications. An effective positioning strategy makes it possible to deliver the same message consistently across all media and content, including websites, brochures, social media, ads, and presentations -- to investors, industry analysts, and of course buyers.

There’s no confusing the positioning of Mercedes Benz, high-end luxury and exclusivity, with Dodge, mass-market and muscle. Every company needs a positioning statement.

A unique value positioning statement is an internal compass. Albert Einstein said, “If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.” That’s a great way of thinking about your unique value positioning. It’s so fundamental to your success, creating a positioning statement is the first thing to do after defining a mission statement and goals. Here’s the flow: vision, mission, and objectives > determine the positioning of your brand, product, and services > develop a market strategy and core message > build an action plan > execute the action plan and measure the results. In other words, your strategy needs a strategy and the best to get there is to carefully craft your unique value positioning statement.

Balance the positioning triangle to attain a competitive advantage. Three things count above all else -- how and why your target audience makes purchasing decisions, how your competition is positioned, and what your product has to offer. To avoid parity or sameness, align your strengths and differences to the buying motivations of your particular audience that are not being addressed by competitors. Be very specific and focus only on the one or two of the most important buying criteria. This requires a really deep understanding of your target audience — the details behind why they buy.

The unique value positioning statement template. A positioning statement can focus on your company’s brand or a particular product or service. Decide which is more important for your go-to- market plan. If you play in several markets or product sandboxes, create a positioning statement for each using this formula:
For [target customer/market] who [statement of need or opportunity], [brand/product/service name] is a [product/service/market category] that [statement of key benefit based on selection criteria]. Unlike [competing alternative] [brand/product/service][statement of primary differentiation] because [reason to believe].
It’s critical to set the frame of reference for the buyer because a brand, product, or service cannot be positioned in isolation, even if you truly believe that you have created a new category of some sort. Buyer’s brains need to have a point of reference to relate with. Also, the Reason to Believe must credible. Caution -- do not attempt to use your unique value positioning statement as your fifteen-second pitch. Instead, use your positioning statement to build a core message and communications plan.

That’s it! We’ll, except for a few weeks of hard work and sweating over the details.

This is a process of building a distinct image for your company and its products or services. Once completed, it’ll be easier for you and your team to articulate how your offering fits into your buyer’s world and why your solution is different than other choices.

Just about everything you do inside your company and to drive revenue will revolve around your unique value positioning statement -- your branding, messaging, sales engagement, and much more.

What’s your unique value positioning statement?

Ron Stein is President of FastPath Marketing (www.marketing-strategies-guide.com) and the author of the Rapid Impact Marketing & Selling Playbook. As a speaker, coach, and consultant he works with small business owners helping them to accelerate the path between their vision and the actions needed to reach, win, and keep customers. Ron is the creator of the FastPath to More Customers Now! 7-step marketing system based on more than twenty years as a successful business owner, corporate CEO, business development executive, and salesman. He is also a mentor at two nationally recognized business accelerators. Ron offers one-on-one and small group mentoring, conducts seminars, and consults. He can be reached at 727-398-1855 or Ron@FastPathMarketing.com.