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Positioning is the art of differentiating your business from your competitors so potential clients know if you’re the right fit for them. It’s that ‘je ne sais quoi’ that sets us apart from others in our category.
It’s important to figure out your positioning so you’ll stand out from the masses who do what you do (hairdressers, auto mechanics, coaching, marketing, whatever your ‘category’ is). Standing out helps you make more sales – that’s the purpose!
Naturally, our beliefs enter into the task of delivering our products to our market. Especially in service businesses where we must connect directly with clients, our beliefs are exhibited in the connection we have and our interactions with others.
Whether we listen respectfully to clients at an intuitive level, see how they react, and advise them with truth and honesty. If we just impose our standard works-for-everyone-else products or ideas onto their business, we’re not being truly respectful of their deeper needs.
If we elicit a depth of understanding and communication that leads to original thought and special clarity we are evoking a kind of ‘dare-I-say-spiritual’ connection.
HOW TO DO IT WRONG
Unfortunately, many businesses still sadly promote their positioning as “superior service”, an overused and meaningless term in our current culture and one which they mistakenly think sets them apart, don’t you think? After all, Nordstroms says they give great service, and McDonalds says the same thing. You can’t evaluate service until after you make a purchase, so it’s just not effective positioning.
MY OWN EXPERIENCE: RIGHT OR WRONG? YOU DECIDE
I started my own business evolving from musician to actor to film and TV director to marketing while managing businesses along the way. Finally I learned what I really wanted to express was both my creative and practical side using the full breadth of my experience studying human behavior, communications, anthropology, the arts, how people react (that’s what acting and directing teach), design, and management.
I wanted to help business owners evolve using their own inner creativity, purpose, talents and resources. I watched so many owners abandon their deeper beliefs or spirit as they grew their companies – losing their founding principles while being distracted with employee problems, financial disasters, lawsuits, sales fluctuations, and other complex management issues. I knew there was a method for bringing one’s entrepreneurial spirit back into one’s company.
HOW DOES POSITIONING EVOLVE? THE INQUIRY
I find that once a person’s beliefs are defined, it’s relatively easy to bring those beliefs into everyday practice at work—whether one is an abstaining nun devoting their body to Christ, a Buddhist monk living in the moment or just your basic entrepreneur trying to get through your day in an ethical and caring manner while earning a living. In business, we manifest our skills and talents in our work.
In the genesis of my own business, I was a trained musician, designer, filmmaker and manager which required experiencing my work and life on an intuitive level. I am trained to listen and perceive deeper issues about who my clients are, what they believe, what they need, how they do things and what their problems and successes are. They say I am able to give a deeper level of advice based on what will work within the framework of their values and beliefs.
HOW REVENUES INCREASED
Once this kind of inner positioning really became clear to me with my own business (after a decade in business), I was able to start discussing the spirit of marketing with my clients. I started attracting the perfect kinds of clients for me and my revenues shot up. The same happens for my clients whom I teach to understand their market and themselves on an intuitive or value/spirit level so that they can fulfill their purpose with greater ease.
This is what my clients say. And this is how I’ve created a method to position my clients – something almost impossible to do for oneself. I call it my Knowledge is Bliss package. It just makes it so easy for a business to understand it’s positioning amongst the rest of the world. It turns a challenge into a really fun quest for a deeper truth. Increased sales is the result from clarification on your positioning. Now that’s good marketing.