THINKing

Go Ask Alice

One of fiction’s finest marketing minds, The Cheshire Cat, once told Alice in Wonderland something all business owners and marketers should remember:

“If you don’t care where you are going, it doesn’t make a difference which path you take.”

For businesses bent upon success, it does matter which path you take. A positioning statement helps you chart your path to success because it lets all your audiences – internal and external – know where your organization stands in the battle for your consumers’ minds.

Positioning: What Is It?

You should not confuse a positioning statement with your market position. As Harry Beckwith states in his book Selling the Invisible, “A position is a cold-hearted, no-nonsense statement of how you are perceived in the minds of your prospects. A positioning statement, by contrast expresses how you wish to be perceived. It is the core message you want to deliver in every medium.”

Your positioning statement will be found where three items intersect:

- your business acumen/aspirations
- your market
- what truly differentiates you

Of the three, it is your market which holds the key to your positioning. That doesn’t mean that your acumen and aspirations are irrelevant. You must have a clear understanding and shared agreement on these at the management level in order to develop an effective positioning statement.

Tomorrow, we’ll talk about our approach to developing an effective positioning statement.

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