Developing a Well-Crafted Positioning Statement
Let's inception with front matters first, shall we? The definition of a positioning statement.
To be honest, there are a portion of colorful definitions, and some of them can be entirely confusing. What's more, community recurrently purchase a "positioning statement" mixed up with taglines and slogans, and all kinds of other things.
But in that I'm an uncomplicated all heart of person, I'm honest going to intersect to the chase, whether that's okay with you.
Based on my 25 age in advertising and marketing, my definition of a positioning statement is as follows: A corporate statement that defines the support of your product / utility to your item customer, and states how you're antithetic from your competitors.
Simple, right? Well, sometimes.
And, sometimes not. It in fact depends on how you road it, who you invite to aid you, and how "in-touch" you are with your company's goals, your industry, and your customer.
A well-crafted positioning statement should administer lucidity and focus. It needs to be a quite straightforward memo approximately how you're perceived in the minds of your basis audience.
Without a quota of bells and whistles, it should give back the following:
- Who are you?
- What is your pursuit / industry?
- Who is your body customer?
- What are the needs of your object customer?
- Who are your competitors?
- What is the decisive extras of your business over your competitors?
- What is the solo boon of your product/service, particularly compared with your competitor's product/service?
- Why should your intention conjecture you can deliver the benefits?
In establishment to reimburse these questions and fashion your positioning statement, it's a choice belief to brainstorm with a bevy of solution body politic and/or advisors. These tribe should be bodies who "get" the sight of your company, and who aren't afraid to divulge their mind. What you don't hunger is a bunch of "yes" persons afraid to disagree! Fine results regularly come from considerable debate!
I'd propose three sessions:
Brainstorming Session #1 - Should be used to go back the above questions. Don't redact yet...just gratify everything on paper or marker board. This testament most doable be your lengthiest session thanks to it will rapacious some darling in-depth self-study. To build the session shorter, you might assent to sending away the questions beforehand to your attendees so they can be thinking about them. Go over them to come ready to deliver feedback. Accede forging it a Saturday session, and add mid-morning lunch and lunch. Be definite to deed breaks. Or, you might allow for breaking it into two Saturday forenoon sessions. Feasibly still a weekend retreat. Be hip and inspirational.
Brainstorming Session #2 - This will be where you will edit, sift and grant on the answers to the questions.
Brainstorming #3 - The ending session will be where you prosper the statement. I get included an case template below that you can follow, or advantage as a starting point. Remember, there is no divide and dried apricot course to phrase a positioning statement. It's yours and you can discharge what you allied to it.
Positioning Statement Templates
There are lousy with contradistinct ways you can construct your statement, however this one is the most common. I complete in the blanks so you can beam how the template translates to the real-world. The numbered shorten are defined underneath the statement.
For the (1) upscale motorcycle rider who wants (2) to stand elsewhere in the crowd, (3) Hawg Municipality Choppers is the solitary (4) motorcycle shop in the region that provides(5) award-winning custom-built choppers that dart as useful as they look.
(1) Your oppose audience
(2) Inference to purchase your product
(3) Your product or avail
(4) Your production sort
(5) Your benefit
Enjoy the journey.
It's probably exigent to disclose you that the mechanism of crafting your company's positioning statement is again a step of self-discovery. In your brainstorming sessions, it is positively imaginable that you'll asset gone things you never knew, and stretch your brain in all kinds of at odds directions.
But never fear. Honesty and self-discovery sets the phase for growth. In disposal to cultivate to the adjacent level, you exigency to conceive and affiliate on where you come from, where you're going, and how you're going to acquire there.
Developing a positioning statement is the beyond compare event to invest in started on the journey.
Published: July 25, 2008