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Is This Magic Word Missing from Your Marketing?

Guest Post By: Michael Martine

One day not too long ago, I was out running errands with my step-daughter and granddaughter. My granddaughter is five. I decided to treat everyone to some lunch at McDonald’s. As we turned into the parking lot, I asked my granddaughter “What restaurant is this?” She’s just barely learning to read and write simple words, but she’s certainly seen her share of McDonald’s commercials on television. I wanted to see if she knew the name, maybe by recognizing the famous golden arches.

She new the name of the restaurant, alright, but not in the way I’d anticipated: “It’s the KIDS’ RESTAURANT!” she shouted. (She shouts. A lot.)

McDonald’s = Kid’s Restaurant

The kids’ restaurant. She knew exactly what McDonald’s was. I was stunned, because lately, I have been on a reading rampage, learning everything I can about one magic word that’s likely missing from your marketing.

That word is positioning.

McDonald’s positioning is so strong that a five-year-old girl knew it unquestionably.

People are busy and they don’t remember much. There’s only so much room in our poor, overstuffed heads for information. The mental “place” where we “put” an idea about a thing is its position in our minds. Domino’s Pizza is fast. Coke is the real thing. Staples is easy. Wal-Mart is low prices. BMW is the ultimate driving machine. Volvos are safe.

And McDonalds is for kids, as my granddaughter rightly understood.

What is Burger King? Nobody really knows. Majorly confused, apparently. Between off-putting “edgy” marketing campaigns and dilapidated restaurants that look like the ass-end of the eighties, Burger King has no discernible identity. They occupy no real position in our minds. For that is where positioning takes place: in the mind of the prospect, not in the product.

What Word Do You “Own” in the Mind of Your Prospect?

BMW will never “own” the word safety, and Volvo will never be the ultimate driving machine. Any car company that tries to take the word safety away from Volvo will fail. Sure, other cars are still safe—some may even truly be safer than a Volvo. But Volvo already owns that word and it will never be taken away.

So…

What position do you have?

What word do you “own” in the minds of your prospects?

You say you’re a virtual assistant? a copywriter? a graphic designer? Well, woop-de-doo! There are only fifty squizillion other virtual assistants, copywriters, and graphic designers out there.

Good luck with that.

But what if you were the “CRM VA”? Or the “Green Products Copywriter”? Or the “Food Packaging Graphic Designer”? Those are positions. Those are mental storage places for your business, so it won’t be forgotten. So it will be recognized. When people ask who you are, others will say, “Oh, he’s the green products copywriter.”

That’s the magic and the power of positioning.

Why Positioning is So Powerful, It’s Practically Magic

Do you know what the most common problem is that I help my blog consulting clients with? They don’t know what to blog about. The reason why they don’t know what to blog about is because they don’t know who they are. But once you’ve figured out your position, you know exactly who you are. You’re not just a transcriptionist: you’re an Internet Marketing Transcriptionist, (or perhaps you’re a Board Meeting Transcriptionist) and now you have the perfect angle for content in your blog posts that is practically guaranteed to attract the right prospects to your site and convert them into paying customers.

When asked who their ideal customers are, most business owners say the same thing, and it’s wrong: “My ideal customer is anyone who can write a check that clears! Ha ha ha!” Nope, sorry, You can’t please everybody. You can’t be all things to all people: you’ll just end up being nothing to no one.

But when you figure out what word you want to “own” in the minds of your prospects, this problem magically solves itself.

When you have your position down, you also solve the problem of product or service differentiation. Instead being yet another web designer that charges by the hour (yawn), you’re a web forms specialist who charges by the number of fields and features the form needs. In fact, some forms are so common, that you’ve created digital products where your customers can just buy the forms code from you with a click, even if you’re soundly sleeping in bed! Now that’s differentiation! Positioning helps you hone your offer.

Where to Learn More about Positioning

If you want to learn more about positioning, the following books are required reading:

• Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind
• The New Positioning: The Latest on the World’s #1 Business Strategy
• The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing

The Most Important Thing

Determining your position will be the most important task you undertake in your business. It’s kind of scary. It’s counterintuitive because you’re closing off options and that feels like it shouldn’t work.

Except it does work. And we have many examples (and counter-examples) right in front of our faces to prove it, like the ones I mention above. Customers don’t want just any “good” solution to their most pressing and stressful problems. They want theright solution, the best solution. Positioning helps you own the right word in your customer’s mind, helps you totally dominate an entire category in your customer’s mind.

What’s your position? Tell us in the comments!

Michael Martine boosts your bottom line with a blog with his blog consulting services, training, and products at Remarkablogger. He lives in beautiful Vermont, where the they’re getting tons of snow and the expected low tonight will be three degrees below zero, Farenheit. He tries to keep the blood levels in his caffeine system from getting too high and spends way too much time on Twitter. Michael is also the brains behind WordPress SEO Secrets.

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Published by: Grant Griffiths

Full post as published by Blawg for Profit on January 11, 2010 (boomark / email).