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95Chapter 7: Establishing Your Position and Brand

First-in-a-market businesses and first-of-a-kind products have to market fast
and fastidiously because, in the end, being first isn’t as important as being
first into the consumer’s mind.

Determining your positioning strategy

The easiest way to figure out what position you hold is to determine what
hole would be left in the market if your company closed tomorrow. In other
words, what does your business offer that your customers would have a hard
or impossible time finding elsewhere? Other questions that will lead to your
positioning statement include the following:

ߜ How is your offering unique or at least difficult to copy?
ߜ Is your unique offering something that consumers really want?
ߜ Is your offering compatible with economic and market trends?
ߜ With which businesses do you compete and how are you different —

and better?
ߜ Is your claim believable?

Don’t aim for a position that requires the market to make a leap of faith on
your behalf. If a restaurant is known for the best burgers in town, it can’t sud-
denly decide to try to jump into the position of “the finest steakhouse in the
state.” Leapfrog doesn’t work well when the game is positioning.

Determine what has built your success to date. Develop your position around
that distinct attribute. Here are a few examples of positioning statements:

ߜ Skyliner is a residential development offering families the finest view in
Pleasantville.

ߜ Treetops is an alpine inn hosting the most pampered ski vacationers in
the East.

ߜ Small Business Marketing For Dummies is a friendly guide packed with
low-cost, high-impact advice especially for do-it-yourself small business
marketers.

See how it works? A positioning statement is easy to construct. Just apply the
formula you see in Figure 7-1.