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94 Part II: Sharpening Your Marketing Focus

Filling a Meaningful Market Position

Positioning involves figuring out what meaningful and available niche in the
market your business is designed to fill, filling it, and performing so well
that your customers have no reason to allow anyone else into your market
position.

The tricky thing about positioning is that it’s not something you do to your
business; it’s something the market does for you. Customers position your
company in their own minds. Your job is to lead them to their positioning
conclusions through your branding and marketing communications efforts.

How positioning happens

When people learn about your business, subconsciously they slot you into a
business hierarchy composed of the following:

ߜ Me-too businesses: If the mind slot — or position — that you want for
your business is already taken, you’ll have to convince consumers to
switch allegiances on your behalf, and that’s a tough job. The best
advice to a “me-too” business is to find a way to become a “similar-but-
different” business. Instead of simply opening your town’s umpteenth
pizza shop, open the only one in a trendy new neighborhood, or the only
one that offers New York–style pizza by the slice, or the only one that
uses recipes from Southern Italy in a trattoria setting. Your distinction
better be a pretty compelling one, though, because you’re going to have
to convince people that 1) your difference is worth hearing about and 2)
your difference is worth changing for.

ߜ Similar-but-different businesses: These are businesses that market a
meaningful difference in an already crowded field. If your town has three
accounting firms, but you open the first one that caters specifically to
small businesses, then you have a meaningful point of distinction. And if
you communicate that distinction well, you’re apt to win an available
position in the minds of entrepreneurs and small business owners.
Depending on the nature of your business, your positioning distinction
may be based on pricing, inventory, target market, service structure, or
company personality. The most important thing is that the difference
matter to your target market.

ߜ Brand-new offerings: If you can be the first to fill a market’s needs, then
you have the easiest positioning task of all. But you must jump into the
market skillfully and forcefully enough to win your way into the con-
sumer’s mind before anyone else can get there.