Positioning Strategy that works for a struggling business.

Positioning your product, service, or business.

Marketing: Developing a positioning statement.

This elusive concept

    Can be captured with some laborious time spent, understanding the significance of what customers tell you, about their reasons for buying.

    That statement becomes your drum beat and most important message. Yell it in all your ads and printed statements.

Just how do you go about Positioning your Product, Service, or Business?

    I'll give you five steps, often shown on the subject, on the internet, on the subject; for example at: http://www.beaupre.com/blog/index.cfm/2009/5/22/Positioning-elevator-mission-and-vision-statements

    Of course, it could take a four year college course to understand the idea totally - and many take such course as a hopeful tool for their vocation.

This story is explains how difficult it is to develop a positioning statement.

    I go to a little bohemian store where they sell fresh San Francisco French baked bread, and Mediterranean style foods.

    I make a special 30 mile trip there to buy two loafs of 3 foot long bread, a pound of salami, olives - from one of the many open displays of such, they scoop a pint of for you, on one counter, and a pint of tubuli. And sometimes, great pastry.

    By being friendly with a customer ahead of me, and asking what she buys here, I was re-introduced to tuboli. A chopped fresh parsley, mint, with tomato, onion, and crushed hominy; blended into a salad, with lemon juice, vinegar, olive oil, and salt and pepper.

    A spoonful of tuboli in my mouth, with a slice of salty salami, mixed in the fray, and then a bite of fresh french bread - ripped off the loaf - and thrown in, somehow makes it all delicious - to my Greek/Ukrainian blood ties. That is as good as it gets, on the food delicacy side.

I grave this and repeat

    Each time I'm in Austin. I go there if for no other reason than to be revitalized by the meal just described.

    Anyhow, the friendly owner, and I chat sometimes. So I ask him hows things - business, he cries. The name of his little store is Phonetician Bakery - in Austin, Texas.

    He does not promote off any particular central statement, for his reason for being.

In 4 pages of google,

    Typing in, "phoenician bakery, austin texas." I find on page four, what should be his Marketing, positioning statement.

    Now, I'm saying this because I want to describe the purpose of the place. Their reason for being. This statement from google, pager four, says it best...

    "Phoenicia Bakery and Deli is a grocery store, bakery, and restaurant all in one, carrying foods from around the world with an emphasis on Mediterranean"

That is very close to what I think - and maybe their patrons, too.

    "With a strong hint of homemade," might be a sentence added to the message, somehow - as I feel, foods there, are not the cardboard boxed stuff you get at grocery stores. They are more like what I would expect homemade to be - were I to visit the Mediterranean.

Here are the steps to making a positioning statement

  1. For (these kinds of customers)
  2. Who (have the following problem)
  3. Our product is a (describe the product or solution)
  4. That provides (cite the breakthrough capability)
  5. Unlike (reference competition),
  6. Our product/solution (describe the key point of competitive differentiation)

Try your hand at filling-in the blanks.

    You will see how difficult it is. Maybe, you will come up with a paragraph that shows your worth - of your product, your service, your business, yourself - with a true value, from the customers point of view.

    ..... george. Wana chat on this? email me at megapower@grandecom.net

5 Steps to Positioning your Product, Service, or Business. 
A Marketing Statement differentiating you as the best choice, compared to your competitors. Check these two positioning statements out 
Positioning your product, service, or business. My blog

Positioning your product: Mega Power, positioning Demo