I was conducting a brand audit session recently to help a group compose their first positioning statement. I quickly realized that the group thought a positioning statement and mission statement were the same thing. They already had a 15-year-old mission statement that was more of a quote than a mission statement. I explained that a mission statement was a loftier notion that guides how they conduct their business – in this case, a nonprofit. I explained how a positioning statement would help them differentiate themselves from their competition in their marketplace. Because they are a nonprofit that helps people in need, they had a hard time understanding why they needed to be competitive. I explained that everyone has choices — that includes the people they help, the organizations and individuals that provide donations and the employees and volunteers who donate their time. This particular organization had a 60-year history so naturally they have had different ideas about who they are, whom they serve and how they talk about themselves as a group and as individuals. A survey that went out before the audit revealed that no two people in the leadership team had the same way of describing their roles, values, assets or history. They had over 50 core areas of strength and wanted to list them all in their positioning statement.
We worked through the following steps over the next few hours and walked away with an approved positioning statement. The resulting document was stronger and the team was more likely to adopt it because they worked as a group to create it.
The Pole Position:
First, start with your organization’s name since that’s the easiest to complete. Second, take an hour or so to capture and list your core value and end consumer benefits. Narrow your list to your top four to five. Third, define the category you compete in. For example, if you’re a software company that makes contract management software, you’re in the software development industry. But more specifically, you’re in the contract management software category. Some companies use loftier words to describe their industry. But in the end, you’re only competing against other contract management suites. So keep your category as specific and as close to the industry standard as possible. Last, you’ll want to find your unique selling proposition or reason to believe why your product or service is better. Make a list of not just the tangible assets, but also of the emotional benefits. It’s important to not just know that your product is faster, but its speed equals user time savings. That’s the end benefit of speed and is much more marketable than speed.
Plan on lots of discussion throughout the process. You must leave room on the table for a few philosophical side discussions about topics related to the exercise. Sometimes, a seemingly unrelated side-note becomes fodder for a greater understanding of the organization’s purpose. Healthy debates often occur. Foster whatever conversation helps lead you to the strongest list of core values, end consumer benefits and competitive differentiators. But be sure to wrangle your group to get to the session’s outcome: the positioning statement.
How long should it take? Typically, a four to five hour session will get you through the process of discovery and craft a preliminary positioning statement. Mornings are always best to conduct your thinking sessions because we tend to think faster and are more alert, so everyone contributes more.
Remember, a good positioning statement gives your brand clear direction on how to lead your future marketing activities. It’s not a mission statement to be shared on your website for consumers but rather a guiding statement about how to get through to your customers.
A typical positioning statement has four key elements:
- Target Market
- Your Category (the specific market you conduct business in)
- Brand Promise (the promise you make to your consumer)
- The Reason to Believe (the reason to believe your brand promise. Usually, it’s your core values and brand attributes that either individually or as a group form a unique selling proposition for your Target Market to choose you over your competition.)
Once you have those four elements, the rest is easy. Right? Wrong.
The standard format goes like this: For (Target Market), (Brand Name) is the (Category/Product/Service) that (Brand Promise/Benefit) because only (Brand Name) is the (Reason to Believe).
If you just plug the answers into the format, you end up with a long, run-on sentence that doesn’t always make sense or resonate with anyone. If you boil down a positioning statement, it tells us what we really want to know: who we are, what we do, the arena we compete in and what makes us better.
Generally, the process of plugging in the variables can take an hour or so. Our firm writes and edits the statement in real time during the audit process to get buy-in from all key stakeholders. We’ve found that when we go off and craft the message without them, it’s much harder to get their buy-in. So, we roll-up our sleeves and get the positioning statement down to a good working model before we leave. There’s great value in this approach because the entire team is usually in agreement by the end of the process and everyone leaves feeling energized about their new way of conducting business.
In addition to walking away with a solid positioning statement, all participants have greater alignment and a renewed sense of team and community. So next time you’re charged with composing or revising your positioning statement, you’re not in a plug-n-play game anymore. You’re actually bringing your team closer together with a greater sense of purpose. And we all know that with the right product mix, team and communication, your bottom line will reap the reward.
-Randall Erkelens
Creative Rebel
