Many businesses struggle to get positioning right. They keep tweaking benefits promoted by the competition, tuning into the ever-changing noise of the market, and experimenting endlessly with copy that hardly represents who they are.
For such businesses, at market touchpoints, consumers can’t help but discover a disconnect – products that are at best ‘me-too’, services that have no differentiating effects and a set of experiential activities that lack ‘soul’.
Apparently, something isn’t right. The business isn’t hitting peak performance. Like adolescents moving from copying one role model to another, or experimenting with models of behaviour, there seems to be a constant shift.
Adolescents experience such struggle because they are going through an ‘identity crisis’, a stage of life when their identity structure is weak. Maturity sets in when these adolescents start asking the basic question: ‘What is the real me?’
Market positioning processes aren’t so different from the preceding. Positioning can hardly be reflective or effective when a business isn’t true to itself. Being true to oneself is discovering true identity, essentially personal characteristics that are both different from others and resistant to irrelevant influences. This, of course, is one of the reasons organisations carry out identity audits when they experience severe pushback and declining sales.
A business’ identity will be clearly defined once it can answer questions such as what its particular vision is, what makes it different, what core need it fulfils, what its field of competence is, what signs make it recognisable, and what its values and permanence are.
Crafting a positioning that would be felt, compelling, and differentiated at touchpoints involves incorporating sound identity inputs. Positioning itself is derived from an analytical process that is fed by a critical consideration of the business identity married with market needs.
Positioning driven solely by market needs alone results in market pretence; as such a business may lack the competence and values that sustain the position right at the point consumers interact and engage with its products or services. It is like a song that isn’t coming from the soul, or an act that isn’t springing from the heart. Discerning audiences will pick out gaps.
For positioning to be impactful and sustained, it is important to factor in these aspects:
- Who are we? You can change the content of someone’s mind, but you can’t completely change their gene. Your business has a gene. It is the founding vision. Always remember that the market may change, but the vision can align without twisting too far from the soul of the business.
- What unique benefits do we offer? Core needs hardly change. Businesses compete on how those needs are packaged and repackaged to provide more ease, efficiency, and speed. Craft your positioning based on core market needs, not the fads.
- What is the competition offering? You will only attract and sustain market interest if you are not ‘me-too’. For whatever it is worth, always find your angle of differentiation. Essentially, the angle that represents you but meets the aspiration of the market.
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