How to Position Your Company in the Minds of Consumers
How to Position Your Company in the Minds of Consumers
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.
How to Position Your Company in the Minds of Consumers - To learn more about this author, visit Bill Tamminga's Website.
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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.
How to Position Your Company in the Minds of Consumers - To learn more about this author, visit Bill Tamminga's Website.
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Kim CastleWith nearly two decades in the advertising and design business, with clients like Domino's Pizza, General Motors, Direct TV, Pedigree, Wolfgang Puck, Higher Octave Music, Hollywood Celebrity Products, Disney, and Paramount, as well as thousands of entrepreneurs around the world define, structure, communicate, and position their business for greater profits, BrandU(R) co-creators Kim Castle and W. Vito Montone discovered that entrepreneurs could experience the same power that big brands command for a fraction of the cost with the world's only process-based results-drive Integral approach to business creation. BrandU(R) is helping entrepreneurs grow with the power of extreme clarity from idea...to brand...to market(TM) and helping one million entrepreneurs become successful and whole so that they can make a difference in the world. Are you one of them? If you want to experience clarity all the way to the bank(TM), get started now at http://www.brandu.com. - Visit Kim Castle's Website |
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John PowerJohn Power, founder of Biltmore Franchise Consulting, has extensive experience developing and marketing franchises and business opportunities. He has been in and around franchising for over twenty years. From 1980 through 1990 he conceptualized, organized, and developed the American Video Association. He grew AVA to 2,000 national members, before selling the company it 1990. It was later merged into another home video marketing company. From 2000 to 2005 he worked as a contract marketing and human resources consultant to several local and national companies. In 2005 Mr. Power began working as a franchise development consultant on a full-time basis. Since that time he has helped more than three dozen companies initiate and develop their franchising program. He notes that there are many companies interested in developing a franchise program, and who need his specialized assistance. Mr. Power is a “hands-on” franchise consultant. He said, “I am the ‘nuts and bolts’ person who tends to the details for my clients.” Mr. Power holds a B.S. degree with a major in Marketing. See: www.biltmorefranchise.com You may contact Mr. Power at: jpower@biltmorefranchise.co - Visit John Power's Website |
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Dave KurlanDave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website |
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Staging DivaDebra Gould, aka The Staging Diva®, is President of Six Elements Inc., an internationally recognized home staging company. Inspired by many requests from aspiring home stagers wanting to start similar businesses, Gould created the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program. Gould has trained over 1000 Staging Diva Graduates worldwide to start staging businesses. Buying decorating and selling six of her own homes in four years lead to an interest in real estate staging which she turned into a career with the launch of sixelements.com in 2002. Since then she has staged hundreds of homes in addition to teaching home staging training. Gould is the author of several home staging resources including a series of popular ebooks made up of a Design Guide, Color Guide and Portfolio Guide. For more information about Debra Gould visit stagingdiva.com. - Visit Staging Diva's Website |
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