Want to create effective marketing campaigns that attract and convert your ideal customers?
Nail your positioning.
Most businesses skip that step, jump straight into marketing their offer, and then wonder why no marketing tactic works.
Marketing, sales, your offer, customer support, operations, and even who you hire all depend on your position.
Skip positioning, and your business is built on sand.
Sure, you might experience some quick and early wins. But as soon as the novelty wears off, you'll be left with a product you struggle to sell.
Here's how to avoid that.
Positioning Answers 2 Key Marketing Questions
Great marketing requires the answers to two questions
- What will we be known for?
- How will the right people find us?
If you don't have clear answers to those questions, no amount of content, ads, events, webinars, rebrands, updated website copy, sales enablement, BDRs, or new hires will work.
Because at the end of the day, marketing is about giving the right people what they want in the right way so they buy.
Try doing that without a clear, compelling position.
I'll wait. 🥱
What Are You Known For?
The first step in positioning is determining what you want to be known for.
Sounds easy, until you actually try it.
Most businesses have a laundry list of things they want to be known for — from their offer and solution to actually caring and their origin story.
While all those are great to have, you won't be known for everything.
From a psychological standpoint, your ideal customers have ONE spot for you in their brains.
Not 100. Not 10. Not even 2.
ONE SPOT.
And that one spot needs to align with what they want, need, and look for when they are ready to solve the problem that your product or service solves.
Easy, right? 😅
Here's how to find that spot in your customer's mind ↓
Step 1: Research Your Customers
Understand who they are, how they think, what they value, the problems they face, how those problems make them feel, how they search, how they buy, and what truly matters to them.
- Conduct interviews with them
- Stalk them on social media
- Conduct market surveys
- Follow market trends
Collecting that information will give you insights into the spot you could own in their minds.
Step 2: Research Your Competitors
You can't own a unique position if you don't know what positions already exist.
Understand who your competitors are, how they position themselves, how customers see them, how they show up, where they show up, the type of content they create, their offer, methodology, and process.
- Scrape their websites
- Ask your customers about them
- Stalk their social media
- Pull SEO reports
Collecting that information will give you insights into market gaps and ways you can show up and be different.
Step 3: Research Your Company
Dive deep into your own company to understand your methodology, process, operations, the unique value you bring, how you bring it, why you bring it, and how your competitors can't or won't copy it.
You're looking for ONE thing that:
- You do exceptionally well
- Your customers want or need
- Your competitors can't or won't copy
Find that, and you'll find the ONE thing you should be known for.
How Will They Find You?
If you did step 1 above, you should already know where your ideal customers go to find solutions to their problems.
Start with that list.
Great marketing shows up where your ideal customers already are — not where you want to be.
Many B2B companies make this mistake: trying to train their ideal customers to find them in places they don't even use.
Take LinkedIn.
Most people see it as THE platform for B2B companies to connect with their ideal customers.
So they jump on the platform, start creating content, send warm or cold outreach...and then wonder why their pipeline is dry.
LinkedIn is NOT the platform for every B2B company.
In fact, many of our clients at Shft don't use LinkedIn. As we interviewed their customers, we found that they don't even have accounts on LinkedIn or, if they do, they haven't logged into the platform in years.
You'll never find your ideal customers that way.
Try this instead ↓
- Start with the channels your ideal customers DO use
- Choose one social channel: LinkedIn, Reddit, Quora, Instagram
- Choose one search channel: Google, LLMs, YouTube, blog posts
- Choose one nurture channel: email, webinars, micro offers
- Choose one niche channel: Slack community, industry association, RFQ platform, directory, event, trade show, referral network
Four channels that cover the different stages of the buying journey:
- Niche: vetting solutions
- Nurture: moves from lead to purchasing decision
- Search: actively searching for a solution
- Social: build demand before they are ready to buy
Positioned for Effective Marketing
A positioning strategy gives you everything you need for more effective marketing—marketing that creates, attracts, and converts the right type of demand.
Marketing that doesn't work isn't a marketing problem. It's a positioning problem.
Start by determining what you want to be known for and how the right people will find you.
Everything else, including your marketing, falls into place when you do.
Ready to get your positioning on track so your marketing actually works?
Book the Brand OS with the marketing add-on.
We'll uncover what your business should be known for, where you need to be found, and create positioning and marketing strategies that actually make you money.
Until next week,
#SassyJason out.
✌🏼
