Positioning Defined
By Carolyn Rhinebarger
In 1988, a People magazine poll showed that 44% of supermarket shoppers did not know who George Bush was even though he had been Vice President of the United States for four years.
On the other hand, 93% of the consumers recognized Mr. Clean, the genie on the bottle of the Procter & Gamble cleaner of the same name. They recognized Mr. Clean, even though he hadn’t been seen on television in 10 years, which shows you the power of advertising to register a simple message.
Positioning is not what you do to a product. Positioning is what you do to the mind of the prospect.
In our extremely over-communicated society, advertising is like a fog that envelops prospects at every turn. The only hope to score big is to be selective and concentrate on narrow targets or, in other words, take up a “position.”
The only defense the prospect’s mind has to cope with over-communication is to oversimplify the way it handles the messages. The mind, in other words, acts as a filter instead of a transmission system, rejecting complicated or conflicting messages and filing simple, repetitive messages.
In creating your position and crafting your message, you must look at it as a job of selecting the best material to break through the “fog.” The solution lies in the perceptions of the prospect’s mind—not necessarily in the reality of your product or service. Only by turning the process around and focusing on the prospect rather than the company or its products and services can a successful position be identified.
Positioning, then, is an organized system for finding a window in the mind. To succeed, the position must take into consideration not only the company’s strengths and weaknesses, but its competitors as well.
To increase your share of business, you will need to either dislodge your competitor (a very difficult task) or relate your position to theirs. This is where you must look for the hole.
Is it your smaller size? Lower prices? Better technology? Faster turnaround? Higher quality? Free . . .?
Here are some of the pitfalls to be wary of in thinking of holes to fill:
1. Do not fill a factory hole. (In other words, good strategy for the company but clients won’t buy it.)
2. Do not attempt to fill a hole that is taken. (You are not the first, largest, etc. nor do you need to take up that position for success.)
Strategic Guru
Copyright 2004
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