There are an awful lot of marketing strategies which don’t necessarily translate well from large corporations to smaller businesses. However, one marketing practice we wholeheartedly believe in is the positioning statement. It’s so simple yet it can deliver incredible clarity to any business.
So, before you dismiss the positioning statement as just another bit of marketing guff your business can live without, just take a few minutes to see if we can change your mind and prove the benefits of a positioning statement.
What is a Positioning Statement?
A positioning statement is not a strapline or slogan; its purpose is not to be witty or even memorable as it’s purely for your own internal use and will never be seen by your customers. It’s sole purpose is to frame every aspect of your marketing within some clearly defined boundaries.
By using the positioning statement as a reference point, you can easily determine if every aspect of your marketing or advertising is on point and if it’s delivering a consistent message to your target audience (your prospective customers).
In short, a positioning statement delivers focus to your marketing in a beautifully simplistic way, and will help you ensure consistency and efficiency across all your marketing media; from your Facebook page to your website, from your leaflets to your newspaper adverts.
As an example, a possible positioning statement for a plumbing firm in Guildford might be…
“Acme Plumbers are a family-run plumbing firm providing a range of domestic plumbing services to homeowners in the Guildford area. We provide fixed-price quotes with no call-out charge and all of our plumbers have at least 10-years experience.”
You’ll notice that this example statement doesn’t use flowery language and doesn’t attempt to be pretentious or clever. It simply states…
- Who you are (Acme Plumbers)
- What you are (a family-run plumbing firm)
- What you do (domestic plumbing services)
- Who your audience is (homeowners in the Guildford area)
- What the benefit is (fixed-price quotes with no call-out charge)
- Your USP, or unique selling proposition (plumbers have at least 10-years experience, so know what they’re doing)
Now we’ve framed the six key elements of our positioning statement, we’ve got a point of reference for every single piece of marketing or advertising material from your website to your flyers, and everything in-between.
Here’s the part where hopefully a few bulbs will start to light-up.
How to Use a Positioning Statement
If you’ve ever sat in front of your PC and struggled to write an advert or article about your business, this is where a positioning statement will bring clarity to your task.
Let’s look at a few examples of where the positioning statement can be of real help…
Example One – If you are looking at producing an advert for the local paper, you can use the positioning statement to ensure that all the most crucial elements of your business proposition are included – and we’re not talking about stuff that isn’t particularly important to your customers (‘established in 1978’, ‘Quality service’ etc, etc); we’re talking about the things that will actually make them pick-up the phone to you.
Example Two – If you’re approached about an advertising opportunity, you can very simply reference your positioning statement to see if it fits with the opportunity being offered. Using our plumbing firm as an example again, let’s say they’re offered a really good deal for an advert on a website aimed at landlords in Hampshire – by referencing the positioning statement, they can easily determine if this ‘opportunity’ is going to reach their target market. So in this example, their target market is ‘homeowners’, not ‘landlords’, and ‘Surrey’ rather than ‘Hampshire’, so we know it won’t be a good fit for their business.
Now, put on your thinking cap and consider all the advertising you’ve ever done and all the marketing material you’ve ever written. Does it fit with a clear, concise and targeted positioning statement? If not, now is the time to take 30-minutes out of your day and create the perfect positioning statement for your business – we guarantee you’ll be glad you did.
If you need any further marketing advice or any help creating a positioning statement, you can call us on 01252 416 222 or get in touch via our contact page.
