Learn the three steps to establish your brand positioning and identity as an expert in your industry. Define who you are, convey it to your customers, and deliver on it every time.
Is your brand positioning setting you up for success?
Think about the brands you love. What stands out? They have a clear identity. Their messaging resonates with you. They deliver a consistent product that you need and enjoy.
Positioning yourself and building your brand is essential. There are three steps to getting that done.
- Know yourself by understanding your unique offering.
- Know who you serve.
- Be great.
Let’s dive in.
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Knowing Yourself is Critical to Brand Positioning
Knowing yourself is about understanding what you do best. Look at all the things you do: your history, your experience, your business offerings. Ask yourself where your talent is. What is it that you can deliver?
There should be many things on this list. A lot of times, people will think of one thing as opposed to all the things. First of all, give yourself credit. Second, that might hold you up because you might be picking the wrong area.
Understanding What Makes You Different
Knowing yourself means understanding what’s different about you.
One of the everyday things people focus on is the quality of their product, saying, “my product is the best.” That isn’t a point of differentiation. Even if you could prove that you do things better, most products or services are too similar to each other. Clients cannot tell unless they go through the full service.
So quality is not a differentiator. You have to have something else that grabs their attention and makes them want to pick you. That’s where a lot of people struggle.
Stepping Outside ‘Plain Vanilla’ Brand Positioning
Make a list of all the things that you do well, essential items that you like to talk about in your industry. Include what you think you can do.
During a previous interview, I learned from one of the best pitchmen out there, Oren Klaff, writer of “Pitch Anything” and also a new book called “Flip The Script.” One of the things that stood out in his interview was the idea of “plain vanilla.”
When you are talking to a prospect, everyone in this industry can offer you the same thing. Anyone can teach you how to podcast. A lot of people have digital programs. That’s plain vanilla.
For me, stepping outside plain vanilla is focusing on the fact that I am an experienced marketer. I’ve been doing it for 18 years. I understand how to build, market and promote brands. When you work with me, that’s what I bring to the table.
That is ownable.
If I tell you that everything else is the same, you’re not worried about who has the most technical acumen. What matters is the marketing background. That is how I positioned myself. Someone else might do something different. That’s what you have to figure out in your business.
The Blue Ocean Strategy
Another part of brand positioning is understanding the competition. You probably have several talents and areas of strength, but you’re looking for the one that’s unique. If you can’t be number one in that area, pick something else on your list of things you do best.
There is an excellent book on this topic called “Blue Ocean Strategy.” If you find there’s a bunch of competition in one area, it gets pretty bloody in the waters. If you go and find a vast open place, then you can own that space. If you’re the only person fishing, you’re going to be the only person catching fish.
So how do you identify what’s ownable? Figure out what the competition is offering. What do they say in their messaging? What are the things that they talk about that matter? Figure out what you can say in contrast to that.
Knowing Who You Serve
Knowing who you serve is not as easy as it sounds. A lot of people talk about developing their avatars or customer profile. You need to find three things:
- Knowing the right time
- Finding the right place
- Serving the right person
A lot of you have probably heard this. How did this thing happen, and how did this work out? It was the right time and the right place. What does that mean in the context of a well-positioned personal brand?
The Right Time
Knowing the right time means that you understand when someone is at the right stage to work with you. These people are ready for exactly what you are selling.
Some people are doing marketing for the first time. Some people have been seasoned marketers for years and years with a considerable budget.
Sometimes you meet people between those two areas. Maybe they’re just starting to spend a consistent amount of money each month. Those are three very different customers.
When it comes to me knowing who I serve, I get out there and I figure out which of those people is right for me. Is it the person that is just starting? Or is it the person that is starting to be consistent and knows they have a budget and maybe even knows what they’re ready to invest in.
Knowing where they are in their cycle of needing something that you give is important. That’s what I mean by the right time.
The Right Place
Being in the right place means being findable and convenient. It means being aligned with the customers’ goals when they need it.
When you’ve figured out who your people are — early adopters, people in the middle, people who are latecomers — you have to put yourself in the places where they are. You have to make yourself findable.
They’re not going to automatically know you’re there. If you can’t get in front of your target audience, you have to interact in their communities. You have to make it easy for someone in their position to connect with you.
If they are very busy people, that will be more difficult. For example, if someone is just starting on marketing, they are just getting the ropes of things and are very busy.
You have to find ways to go to where they are. If you have a massive client who’s been doing this forever, you have to find a way to get into pitches or do project work. Get to where they are. You might have to go to them.
It has to be easy, convenient, and you have to be precisely where they are in their process and how they like to work.
The Right Person
Serving the right person means understanding the things that matter to them.
People are not avatars. Those are simplified or oversimplified people. That mindset fails to actually understand who people are.
Some people think they have to design some kind of imaginary profile of a person. In my experience, that is not the secret. It is understanding who it is that you serve by talking to the people you bring into your community.
Instead, it’s about building content that brings people together. When you have that community, you can ask them where their problems are. What are the challenges they need to solve? How can you help solve those problems?
That is how you become the right person for them. You understand who those people are.
You can get to know and learn what makes them unique. It allows you to figure out your actual customers. Then you can figure out what makes them right for you. That’s how you find out the right person.
To Be Great, You Have to Do Something Great
Being great is about four things:
- Consistency
- Impact versus expectations
- Creating experiences
- Striving
The Power of Consistency in Brand Positioning
To be great, you have to do something great. It’s a bit of a mantra for me. What it means is that I have to go out of my way to make an impact on people’s lives. But this can’t just be one impact; it has to be multiple impacts on their lives.
Consistency means when you deliver your service or product, you do it the same way every time. People know they can count on it.
You can’t be great at anything unless you can do it over and over again. If you’re great once, this doesn’t help you. If the other 10 people don’t have the same experience, then you’re never going to have a reputation.
Your brand will never grow on a poor reputation. Delivering a consistent product is up to you. You need to deliver it well, every time.
The best businesses out there are the ones that you know what you’re going to get every time and don’t even question it. When you take a bottle of ketchup off the shelf, you know it’s going to taste the same every time.
Inconsistency is never an issue. You don’t think about whether a bottle is of a different quality; you just know these companies have got it figured out.
It’s harder in service-based businesses, but that’s what you need. You need the consistency of delivery. The way to do that is to have frameworks: a process and a way of delivering that experience perfectly.
So you have to have consistency. It isn’t about how to do a million things for someone. It’s about how to do the job that you’ve promised well every time.
The Importance of Impact in Brand Positioning
Impact is about going above and beyond what matters to people. You need to figure out how to meet expectations and over-deliver on them. It will make them feel like they’ve gotten ten times the value that they were expecting.
If you can over-deliver on your product or service, you’ve won. People will see you as the person they want. Not only that, but they also want to help others have that same experience. This process is where you start getting recommendations.
The Power of Creating An Experience
The brands that stand out and connect with people are those who know what an experience is.
This is especially true with personal brands. They are the ones that have taken it the next step to create a human experience. They develop a way of interacting that gives that human touch. It leaves customers remembering the feeling you gave them.
A lot of people won’t remember the thing you did or the thing you said, but they will remember how you made them feel. They know what it feels like to find a brand that can give them some kind of human experience.
You can create that human experience. It is the only measurable thing that drives customer loyalty.
How? You have to get out there, have conversations, shake hands, hold events, or go to them. Whatever that thing is, if you can create a meaningful experience, you will have a chance of being great. You will be able to deliver your personal brand in a well-positioned way.
Striving to be Great
The key to striving is that you can always improve. A lot of big companies have realized they must continuously build to the next level. They understand the importance of brand building.
This is especially true with those who have the budget for it. They’re continually improving their processes. But they are also developing the next product lines because they have a road map for what’s coming in their business.
They don’t sell the same things in repetition. They figure out what’s next, then they ask themselves the question, “What’s the next thing my customers are going to need?”
These companies put in the time and research to answer those questions. It allows them to develop solutions before the customer knows they need it. That’s what striving is all about. You have to think about the next steps.
You are trying to get ahead of people. If you do that, you have one of the main ingredients it’s going to take. It will give you the tools to be a brand that people recognize as different.
Own Your Brand Positioning
Being well-positioned is a combined effort that takes you putting in the time in all aspects.
You’ve figured out what you do best that’s different. You know that being good at something is not a way to differentiate yourself. You know to find what makes you unique by seeing what your competitors do.
You’ve understood the people that you’re serving. You do this by talking to them. You go to their community events and integrate yourself with your clients. Through this, you can get to know them and understand what they need.
You figured out how to give them the best experience by being excellent, consistent, and making an impact. You know that being good once will never do. Don’t forget to over-deliver.
Remember, you cannot be well-positioned if you only do half of the work.
MORE ADVICE AND INTERVIEWS
If you’d like my full plan for how to build your content marketing strategy, check out my free Content Marketing Starter Guide.
And here are some more of my most popular thought leader interviews!
- What Business to Start with John Lee Dumas
- Personal Branding Masterclass with Chris Ducker
- Built to Serve with Evan Carmichael