Standing Out As A Small Business

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Standing out as a small business in a crowded field first requires a clear understanding of how customers view you and your competition across a variety of measures.  Enter the marketing buzzword Positioning.  We do try and stay away from buzzwords used by Marketing Consultants in Los Angeles and elsewhere, but this one, well it’s really important. In fact, it’s critical to the building blocks of and foundation of any marketing plan.

Think of positioning as how your product or service is perceived in the mind of the consumer. It’s kind of important right?

So why does this REALLY matter?

Well, to answer this, think of how intuitively our mind understands the relative positioning of Car Brands and how much we are willing to pay for them.

Let’s take a basic view of the car market with a low priced Asian import vs. Higher priced European import – say Hyundai vs. BMW. Where the company positions itself within the overall market dictates how they approach EVERYTHING from their Product Specs to Pricing to Consumer Marketing approaches and Marketing Spend. I think we’d agree that BMW’s positioning themselves as The Ultimate Driving Machine within the car industry has given them a platform to build their brand upon as well as allowing them to charge a premium for their product.

So, our approach to positioning can be summed up in 3 simple steps…

1. Appraise Relative Benefits of Your Product
2. Identify Market Segments and Definite Targets
3. Develop YOUR Specific Positioning Statement in Writing

The best marketing plans have a Positioning Statements that allow all marketers touching the plan to understand how their role supports the overall positioning.

Whether you choose to have a company like ours help you define your positioning or whether you do it yourself, make sure to have a concrete positioning statement IN WRITING to refer back to.

You’ll find this critical to share with vendors and very helpful to YOU when the inevitable tough marketing decisions must be made as your business grows.

Your Positioning Statement is a practical tool to guide your business decisions. Marketing decisions should be validated against your very intentional positioning.

Remember, your marketing foundation must strategically position your product or service in the eyes of your consumer in a way that gets you the sales you want!  In this way, you’ll understand how you stack up vs. your competition and create tools to better stand out when compared to them.

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