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How to Position Your Company in the Minds of Consumers

Written by: Bill Tamminga

Article Overview: In most industries there are no heroes, just choices. So rather than try to be all things to all people, business owners need to proactively position their company and define their points of differentiation to the consumer. Positioning draws the attention of your target market and reduces the chance that your competitors will define who you are, a situation no business owner wants to experience.

How to Position Your Company in the Minds of Consumers

In most industries there are no heroes, just choices. So rather than try to be all things to all people, business owners need to proactively position their company and define their points of differentiation to the consumer. Positioning draws the attention of your target market and reduces the chance that your competitors will define who you are, a situation no business owner wants to experience.

There are three steps to positioning your company: understanding the competencies that lead to success in your industry, evaluating your top competitors in relation to those competencies, and defining your space.

Establish the Criteria

The first step in positioning your company is understanding the competencies that lead to success in your industry. Consumers demand different things in different industries, but a few of the most common things people will pay for include:

Customer Service
Sales Support
Speed
Innovation
Customized Products/Services
Pricing

What are the most important criteria for your industry? Take a second to select the top three or four.

Evaluate Your Company in Relation to the Competition

The next step is to evaluate your company in relation to the competition. Visit your competitors' websites to see what they are saying about themselves. Are they touting their expertise? Are they a low-cost provider? For the four or five criteria you selected, give your competitors a score on a scale of zero to five (zero being the worst, five being the best). It is helpful to put this information on a graph so you can see where each company stands.

Now that you have an idea of how your competitors are positioning themselves, evaluate your own business using the same criteria. If you put the data on a graph, is there a section that looks crowded? In other words, is there a group of companies defining themselves in the same way?

Define Your Space

Next, select the single competency that you will tout to your target market. One of the best things about this exercise is that it opens your eyes to opportunities that will help you differentiate your business. For example, if your top competitors are all vying for the low-cost market, there is probably a place for a company that offers the best customer service.

Once you have latched on to your competency, get the message out on all of your marketing material and talk about it in your sales presentations. To use an easy example, WalMart's slogan is "Save Money. Live Better." Those four words say a lot about the company and how they are positioning themselves in the marketplace.

Defining who you are and what you want consumers to know about you makes it easy for them to make a buying decision when they are ready. Decide to be different and start carving your niche today.

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Article Tags: business owner, business owners, choices, competencies, competency, consumers, customer service sales, customized products, different things, differentiation, graph, heroes, innovation, own business, score, target market, three steps



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