Positioning Your Company

I've been helping early-phase companies with positioning for over 25 years. Over that time, the core issues have remained just about as constant as the misconceptions of what a company position actually is. Start up executives, it seems to me, tend to muddle together terms such as positioning, branding, vision mission and other marketing terms into one big mishmash of buzzword. Each term is supposed to means something.

A positioning statement is where a company starts. It is the strategic cornerstone, the core of all things. A positioning statement captures the essence your product or service and differentiates you in some valuable way from all competitors. A positioning statement is a logical, credible, often bland declaration of where and why you exist. It should reside inside your team’s collective mind. Although, it will need adjustment—hopefully expansion-- over time, positioning statements should be created with the intent of endurance. It is usually unwise to change statements, making them jump around from one imaginary point to another. You confuse your customers, prospects, employees investors and even yourself.
.
Your positioning statement should influence all strategic and most tactical actions. It is best to use language that achieves power in its clarity and simplicity. Even your least-informed team member needs to understand it and make decisions fueled by it.

It is fiction to say that all company members should speak with one voice. But the reality is that the positioning statement can ensure that the discordant voices of the modern enterprise do sing in harmony with each other. There can be a commonality between a CEO’s address from a businesses dais and a receptionist’s response to a stranger’s telephone inquiry. And it seems to me that’s the power of the positioning statement.

Position statements give your team a starting point. Vision tells them where they want to go. Mission tells the team how they should attempt to get there. Brand is how people feel about your company and positioning statements are what you team thinks about itself. Position gives the team a focus, which will prevent it from making the usually fatal mistake of losing its way.

Finally, two notes:

(1) Positioning statements are not slogans. Google’s frequently discussed—“Don’t do evil,” may or may not be a clever slogan. But in no way is it a company position. It does not say what the company does, or for whom it does it. It does not reveal a competitive advantage. Closer to Google’s real positioning statement would be something like, “Google is the only Internet company by focused entirely on end user search solutions. This is much more pedestrian in tone, but much more powerful once you think about it.

(2) Companies write positioning statements. This is different also from marketing positions. Companies create the former. Markets decide the latter.

Comments

[Henry Teage]

Does a positioning statement HAVE to be on the front of every publication? I work at an International Church Organization and we're currently producing a Business Directory. The name and address of the church is at the bottom, for reference. The church's positioning statement and full info is on the inside of the book. However, my boss is requesting that we put the positioning statement on the FRONT of the book as well, right below the name, along with the full contact and Pastors information. Is this RELEVANT? Please Help!