So What, Who Cares?

McClenahan Bruer’s Position on Positioning and Messaging

Positioning and messaging is one of the most important, and seemingly least

appreciated, forms of marketing. It is the foundation on which all successful

communication is built. With powerful positioning and compelling key messages,

everything from PR and advertising to lead generation (and more) performs

better. Without it, these programs have little chance of success.

When it comes to positioning and messaging, we at McBru use a very simple

question as a litmus test to gauge effectiveness: "So what, who cares?" If the

positioning and messaging being evaluated doesn't "pass" that test, it certainly

won't do its job in the market, which is to say it will not build preference for a

company or its products.

In order to effectively build preference, positioning and messaging has to be two

deceptively simple things:

• Highly differentiated, and

• Highly relevant.

The word "deceptive" refers to the fact that those two qualities are anything but

simple to develop. In fact, in highly competitive deep technology markets in which

the laws of physics govern to a large degree what a product can and cannot do,

sometimes it is a real challenge to find, or at least articulate clearly, legitimate

differentiation.

And yet, without differentiation, messages won't penetrate, and positions will be

indistinct from the rest of the players in the market. In fact, undifferentiated or

irrelevant messaging and positioning render outbound marketing efforts next to

useless, effectively wasting budget and resources on efforts that, at best, will be

less successful than they could be, and at worst will fail. Given how crucial solid

positioning and messaging is, why is it so often neglected or skimmed over as

the ugly stepchild of marketing?

Perhaps because it is so hard to do well.

Differentiation: The Key to Premium Pricing

Without differentiation, it is impossible to justify premium pricing, particularly in

highly competitive and/or crowded markets. Conversely, if your company and

products are well differentiated from key competitors, it becomes at least

possible to charge more. That's why the first step we take when tackling a

positioning and messaging project is to delve into competitive messaging.

Admittedly, assessing competitive messaging and positioning is more art than

science. Combing through a company's Web site, ads, news releases, sales

collateral, financial reports and more to extract key messages and the apparent

position a company is striving for requires both a solid grasp of marketing and a

deep comfort with the technology, products and services being addressed. It also

requires the ability to leave bias out of the equation; objectivity is essential to

accuracy.

Armed with solid competitive positioning and messaging, you can begin to

identify gaps and opportunities for differentiation. However, the fact that a

messaging or positioning attribute is unclaimed by the competition does not

automatically mean you should attach it to your own position. Some attributes are

less valuable than others. Conversely, it's important to be brutally honest when

assessing your qualifications for various attributes. For instance, if there is an

800-pound gorilla well established in your particular market, chances are slim to

none that you can successfully claim the attribute of leadership; it would lack

credibility.

Relevancy: The Key to Sales Volume

If differentiation is the path to premium pricing, relevancy is how you get to

volume. The more relevant you are perceived to be by the market, the larger your

target customer base (within the context of your total available market, or TAM)

will be. Relevancy is found in the answer to the question "What's in it for me?" In

other words, it's the degree to which you can meet customers' needs and the

benefits they will get from using your products and services.

The best way to imbue messages with relevancy is to channel the customer

when you're developing them. Thinking as your customer thinks will automatically

orient you correctly vis-à-vis needs and benefits. An all-too-common trap

technology companies fall into is to lead with features. You are justifiably proud

of those technological accomplishments and know how valuable they would be to

customers. So turn your thinking 90 degrees and focus on the value, the need

those features meet, the benefits they are bringing to customers.

If you can craft messages that illustrate how you meet customers' critical needs

and bring them benefits that matter to them, you will automatically communicate

relevancy.

Putting Position and Messages to Work

Now that the hard work of creating a position and messages that are both highly

differentiated and very relevant is over, your work is done right? Not exactly. Now

comes time to employ both strategy and discipline in deploying them.

Starting with strategy, we like to create a matrix, with audience along one axis

and type of message along the other. Examples of targets found along the

audience axis could include trade press, business press, analysts, end users,

purchase influencers and C-level executives, each of whom have very different

perspectives and different relevance needs when it comes to messages. Along

the other axis, message type, we include things like overview statement, sound

bite, or competitive comparison statement. Once this matrix is completed, you

have a clear roadmap for exactly what to communicate to whom and in what

circumstance.

Since all of these various message permutations originate from the same

carefully chosen, highly differentiated and extremely relevant position and key

message statements, you will be assured of consistency of message across all

outbound communications programs. But this is where the discipline comes in:

You have to use the matrix, rigorously. Because all the differentiation and

relevancy in the world woven into your messages won't matter if you are

inconsistent in your use of them.