The order of works seems obvious once stated, and in practice it is almost always reversed: the site is rebuilt, then people wonder what it should say. Campaigns are launched, then the argument is looked for. Content is produced, then the audience is questioned.
Each of these outlays is reversible on paper and is not in practice: it installs a way of presenting yourself that the company will then defend, because it paid for it.
What positioning is, and what it is not
It is not a strapline, nor a style guide, nor a statement of purpose. It is a held answer to four questions, none of them rhetorical:
- To whom. Not “to smaller businesses”, but to which precise situation, in which company, at which moment.
- What. What is sold, worded so the client can repeat it to a third party without getting it wrong.
- Why you. What you do that the firm next door does not — and that is verifiable, not merely asserted.
- Against what. The client’s real alternative, which is often “do nothing” rather than a named competitor.
The first three are readily worked on in meetings. The fourth is the one that gets skipped, and it is the one that determines the argument.
The cost of not deciding
It does not show up in a budget line, which makes it hard to argue for. It appears elsewhere, in forms attributed to something else:
- long sales cycles, because the prospect has to reconstruct for himself what you offer
- systematic haggling over price, for want of any comparison criterion other than the amount
- content that cannot be reused, each medium rewording the offer in its own way
- laborious recruitment, the company unable to say what it expects of a role it attaches to nothing
A company that does not know what it turns down ends up accepting whatever comes. That is a positioning too — the market’s.
Why a site rebuild does not settle it
A rebuild forces you to write copy, and so to formulate something. That is what creates the illusion that it handles the subject. In reality it arbitrates under deadline pressure, in a committee where the person who decides is not always present, and at a moment when the discussion is about mock-ups.
The result is predictable: a compromise text, broad enough that nobody objects, and therefore vague enough to commit to nothing. It will be changed at the next rebuild, three years later, under the same conditions.
The quickest test
Ask three people in the company separately — a director, a salesperson, someone from delivery — to describe in two sentences what the company does and for whom. Compare the answers.
If they diverge, no campaign will align them: the client will hear the version of whoever he speaks to, not the site’s. If they converge but stay generic, the positioning exists on paper and distinguishes you from nobody.
Where to start
With what the company already turns down without having said so. Declined enquiries, projects accepted reluctantly, clients who should never have been taken on: between them they describe a boundary the company applies without having stated it.
What remains is how to go about it without changing trade. The method comes down to four points, in an order that matters as much as their content.
Stating it does not change what the company does. It changes what others can say about it — including, now, the machines that answer in its place when someone looks it up.
Common questions
How do you define a company’s positioning?
By answering four questions: to whom, in what precise situation; what, phrased so the client can repeat it accurately; why you, in a verifiable way; and against what — the client’s real alternative, often “doing nothing”.
What is brand positioning?
It is neither a tagline, nor a style guide, nor a statement of purpose: it is a sustained answer about what the business offers, to whom, and what it refuses. Positioning means giving things up — a promise that excludes no one distinguishes you from no one.
How can you tell whether your positioning is clear?
Ask three people in the business, separately, to describe in two sentences what the company does and for whom. If the answers diverge, no campaign will align them; if they converge but stay generic, the positioning distinguishes you from no one.