Would you sail a boat without a compass? Well, that’s what I thought… You need a positioning strategy for your business to know where to go and which routes to follow to get there.
In one of my previous post, I did tell you about the importance of setting SMART marketing goals for your business. Today, we are going to jump one step ahead and explore the process of defining your positioning strategy (Tweet this).
But first, why does every business need a positioning strategy?
Often considered a very high level task that most business skip, defining your positioning strategy is not the least important task to undertake if you want to succeed.
I could have written about loads of sexy little quick wins that you can apply to help you grow your business but instead, I’m writing about a task that, once done, will permit to multiply by 10 the results of every task you’ll do in the future.
Indeed, creating your positioning strategy will help your business and everyone around it better understand who you are, what you do, for whom and with what purpose. Of course, nothing is set in stone and your positioning strategy will evolve with your business, but that’s not of concern right now.
Your positioning strategy is going to guide your communication and all your business related decisions. It will help you keep on track and maintain the right direction even when you are overloaded with your work. (btw, here’s a great free tool to help you navigate your workload)
So, let’s dig into it, but first, download this template and get back here to starts using it.
Which is the problem you do solve?
It sounds like an obvious question to ask but I’m quite sure you’ve never written that down. Try to define in a unique sentence the bottleneck you do solved. Don’t write about what you deliver but really the problem you do address.
For example in my company, the problem we solve is not "I need a website" or "I need an email campaign", those are already solutions. The problem we solve is: "I need/want to grow my business".
See what we did here? Which company would you hire, the one that creates websites or the one that helps you grow?
The solution
Great, we know what the problem is. Now let’s write down which is our solution. Don’t worry if others solve the same problem, the goal here is to clearly define how YOU do it. This will help you a lot in finding good clients, the ones you want to work with and retain.
To continue with the same example, at AdoraWeb, "the solution we provide to companies that want to grow their business is inbound marketing and growth-driven design". Yes, most people don’t know what either of those is but, none the less, it’s what we do. Thus, it helps us attract the exact client we want to work with and delight.
Your culture
Who are you? Defining your culture will guide you through all decisions you’ll ever have to make. And it’s only by defining your culture that you will be able to stick to it. This will help you manage your teams, expand your network and hire the best employees to fit right in.
I hesitated to share AdoraWeb’s culture with you, because it’s a bit funky but there you go: “AdoraWeb is an agency of A-players working remotely who like Star Wars, Legos and Gin Tonic (only after work hours). We know how to communicate and we know how to fail because we are together on the same boat to deliver.”
Your best client
If you close your eyes right now and imagine the one client that will become your only client for the rest of your life, who is he and why?
Defining your best client, and then your buyer’s persona (we will get to that in another post), is key to growing your business. Not only because you just can’t serve everyone, but also because you will achieve the best results with the clients that are a good fit to your culture and the solution you provide to their problem.
For example, here are some of the characteristics of AdoraWeb’s best client:
- We discuss with the top management
- They consider our work as an investment and not as an expense
- They understand that we are professionals but not magicians
- etc.
Your niche
I’m sure you saw it coming. After describing your best client, you should clarify what your niche is. And no, “SME”, it’s not a niche. Trying to appeal to everyone, you’ll ultimately appeal to nobody.
At the end of the day, your niche should enable you to identify precisely who you’re targeting. Off course, you might have multiple niches but remember, if your niche is too wide, you’ll be running after your clients instead of them coming to you, “the go-to company of the niche”.
Your business strategy
We’re almost done. Once the 5 previous points are clearly defined, you can start building your business strategy. And even if some of your business strategies might be 20 pages tick, it should only answer one question: what will you do to provide your solutions to your best clients’ problem in respect of your culture?
And that, you should summarise it into one sentence, your positioning statement. The one sentence to rule them all (Tweet this).
Your positioning statement
It’s the easiest part, just follow the template and post yours into the comments section bellow.
We (provide this service/value/outcome) for (a specific type of company/industry/market) by (using a specific approach) because (why).
Do you have any question or do you want some help defining your positioning strategy? Subscribe then to this blog to get more insight or simply send me an email. I’ll be glad to help and… do it now while I still have time to answer all my emails personally.
