Want to lose money? Be the same as everyone else.
If you’re looking to grow your business, chances are you’re going to need to attract more customers. In some cases this can mean expanding your product or service offering to appeal to a wider range of individuals, but typically, it means creating a compelling message around your business, and then getting that message out to an audience who are interested to hear it.
We have seen the difficulty that a lack of clear positioning provides businesses, and we’ve also seen the outstanding results that can be achieved by clarifying who you are. Positioning means being upfront about why your business exists, how you can make a difference for your customers, and what it is that you do to deliver this difference. The value of clear positioning in business is easily as important as a good location, quality staff or the quality of your service or product, yet it is often forgotten or ignored by most small businesses.
Want to make money? Tell people why you’re different.
In the first instance you need to create a compelling message, and in order to do so, you need to ensure that you have something unique to say. In other words you need to have a point of difference over your competitors, and a message about your business that is likely to appeal to a distinct audience.
You’ll note here that we haven’t said you need to be ‘better’ than your competitors in some area. Good positioning is about finding a unique point of difference, not about being better. One brand of cola may be sweeter than another, this doesn’t make one better than the other, they simply both appeal to different audiences. Ideally, your point of difference would appeal to the maximum number of people in your broader audience, but there are plenty of very successful and profitable businesses that work in a unique niche within their industry.
We’ll find the difference that works best.
One of the difficulties in positioning your business is that you are often too close to objectively see how you might be unique to your competitors. In addition you may also view your own business with an element of rose tinted glasses, and as a result believe you are more unique in a particular area than you really are. Right Hand Man’s approach to defining a business position is to take our clients through a proven process that enables us to identify possible points of difference about a business over it’s competitors. From there, we test these possibilities to ensure that they can actually be delivered upon, and finally identify which of them are most advantageous in relation to size of the market, ease of communication (both internally and externally), and the ability to demonstrate as a benefit. For more information read our article – The challenge of positioning your business.