Ahhh summer vacations! I hope you enjoyed your vacation! Recently during my vacation, I visited my sister in Nova Scotia. Like a lot of people and families, we hadn’t seen each other for several years due to the pandemic so it was wonderful to hug again.
One small problem was that I came home with a really, really sore back!!! I’m no stranger to pulled-back muscles and know that time, heat and good drugs help. However, after two days of sitting in the car driving home, I could hardly get out of the car! Every time I changed positions, sitting down, standing up, lying down, spasms racked my back. But once I found a new position, everything was tolerable. This leads me to say that ….
POSITIONING is everything!
The same can be said about positioning your business and your personal brand.
Whether you know it or not, and whether you like it or not, your business is ‘positioned’ in the marketplace. Your prospects, your competition, and others look at your brand and have a perception about your business. This perception is what determines whether they will purchase from you or not.
So what is a positioning strategy? A positioning strategy is a combination of all of the tools, tactics and strategies used to differentiate your business in the marketplace and to gain market share.
What does it mean to differentiate your business?
Differentiating your business means that it stands out from your competition. A business that stands out typically gets more leads and has more market share.
Today there is more and more ‘noise’ (competition) in the marketplace which makes it more and more difficult to stand out and differentiate yourself and your business.
In my 40+ years in business, I typically see two kinds of businesses. They are either:
1. The Unknown – these businesses are obscure, invisible and unheard. Sorry to say, these are businesses that exist in the sea of sameness. You know what I mean!
Not long ago I attended an online networking event. It was a guest day so there were multiple representatives from similar industries. In fact, there were 9 mortgage brokers in attendance. I made note of what each one said….. they each said their name, the name of their company, how long they had been in business and their contact information. NOT A SINGLE ONE said anything different that made them stand out! The sea of sameness. Boring. Vanilla. Destined to remain unknown, and not sought-after.
Or
2. The Undeniable Authority – these are businesses that automatically magnetize a larger share of the market including better clients, bigger deals and have the biggest impact. These are businesses that have a positioning strategy that speaks to a very specific and specialized market; they differentiate themselves in their look and feel.
If we were to use the previous example of mortgage brokers … if one of them had said that they specialize in getting unconventional mortgages for real estate investors, then I would have immediately known that they were a true expert in their field and would know exactly who to send as referrals.
The mortgage broker for real estate investors would EASILY get more speaking opportunities, podcast guesting and collaboration opportunities because this broker had differentiated themselves so uniquely.
So are you…. The Unknown or The Undeniable Authority in your industry?
Positioning in the marketplace is everything. It all starts with standing out above the noise and showing the world how different you are from your competition.
What happens when you don’t differentiate your business??? When you don’t stand out, you end up wasting HUGE amounts of time, money and energy on marketing and other activities which don’t bring you clients or the income you desire.
In my upcoming almost free workshop, Uncovering Hidden Profits & Time, we are going to dive deeper into other hidden profit gobblers and time wasters. You won’t want to miss this! (Registration page coming soon!!!).
YOU CAN DO THIS
Diana
P.S. My Monday Morning Question last week, also exposed another hidden profit & time waster (watch here).
