Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Positioning Yourself and Your Business for Maximum Success

Positioning is admittedly an advertising buzzword but it is legitimately one of the most important marketing concepts you will ever consider in your business career.

One of the definitions of positioning is the controlling how your customers and prospective customers think and feel about your business in comparison to other, similar businesses competing for their attention.

Here are several positioning strategies that may seem obvious but many people overlook the obvious and cost themselves a lot of money as a result.

Positioning Strategy 1 – How to Describe What You Do to Attract the Customers You Want.

Let’s start with the name of your business. The best business names telegraph what the business does. For example, Dunkin Donuts is better than Starbucks. At the start, Apple and Amazon were mystery names however obviously they are now hugely successful brand name companies. The question you have to ask is whether or not you want to invest an enormous amount of money and patience in creating awareness and understanding of what your name represents or to start with a name that clearly represents what your business is and does.

Positioning Strategy 2 – How to Price.

You don’t ever want to be in a business that obtained its customers with the lure of “lowest prices.” You cannot build long-term customer retention via the cheapest price. The way you get a customer has great impact on how you will sell to that customer again. There will always be someone willing to offer a cheaper price. If the only thing binding your customers to your company is the lowest price, your business will be as fragile in its tenth year as in its tenth week.

Be sure to sell quality, value, service, and unique benefits; do not sell price.

One of the most interesting things about price is not its impact on profit and income but its impact on positioning. Often, under-pricing sends the wrong message. The business owner thinks he is optimizing sales by offering the lowest price possible but he actually creating skepticism and causing discerning customers to look elsewhere.

In the New Economy, the successful businesses, based on factors other than low or aggressively competitive pricing, outnumber successful businesses that feature low or lowest price promises by at least 500 to 1. Be sure to play the odds.

Positioning Strategy 3 – How to Make Your Image Work for You.

To be perceived as successful and trustworthy in your business, you must match the image of a successful business in your field.

Places of business, product packaging, literature, and advertising, all are subject to the same image concerns as are individual appearances.

We are taught that you can’t judge a book by its cover but we can’t help but judge a book by its cover. You will be judged that way, too!

Most businesses are better served by thinking about their marketing tools as “salesmanship in media” rather than as “advertising.” In simple terms, copy is king. Message matters most. Yes, the wrong presentation for a given market can sabotage event the best message. But the more common error is a beautiful presentation of – nothing.

Ultimately, there must be appropriate marriage of substance and style to make your image work for you. Customer’s expectations must be met and exceeded, anxiety avoided, reassurance given by the image presented by you, your staff, your physical location, and your marketing material.

Positioning Strategy 4 – Self-Appointment.

When we are kids, our parents “appoint us” old enough to stay home alone or old enough to babysit our younger brothers or sisters.

At work, employers or supervisors “promote us” as qualified to do a certain thing or handle a certain responsibility.

This conditioning is not particularly useful when you step into the world of owning your own business.

Please understand that you do not need anybody’s permission to be successful. If you wait for someone to grant you the permission to be successful, you will wait a long, long time.

Business success just is not conferred upon you.

Power and influence is not granted – it is taken.

Expert positioning is all about self-appointment, self-promotion, and self-aggrandizement. Make this note: you become a promotable expert by decision, acquisition, and organization of information, pronouncement, and promotion. Not by anointment by some authority on high.

How do you do this? Write books, give teleseminars, build lists of customers interested in your product or service.

Your positioning decision is the difference between a six-figure income and a seven-figure income based on investor partnering potential, with many clients, as this is the income-multiplying power of positioning.

In positioning yourself and your business for success, you have to clearly determine who you are, then drive that message home to your marketplace. It is also important to make the right decision as the marketplace will usually accept the positioning you chose for yourself, and present to others, as you really are in control of the positioning.

Many high profile business leaders, including the Oracle of Omaha, suggest that if you don’t focus on positioning yourself as an online entrepreneur, being self-employed, or being a small business owner, it will be a very tough road in the months and years ahead; actually they say, it will be an uphill battle.

This suggestion is attracting current and former doctors, CEOs, and other members of the corporate workforce that are seeking a way to leave their established and lucrative careers. They are in pursuit of new opportunities in the world of Social Media and Internet Marketing so they can generate income, prestige, independence, and financial rewards that exceed the levels obtained by most in their previous careers.

You can find out more about Internet Marketing and home-based businesses by reading updates that will be posted at my blog over the next few weeks.

A great book to read is "No B.S. Business Success in the New Economy" by Dan S Kennedy as it was the source of some of the material contained in this post.

In closing, be sure to meet me at my website, WhoIsMikeFarrell, learn some tips about being No 1 on Google at aspenIbiz My Go-To-Market Partners, and learn how to be savvy with your money like the insiders at aspenIbiz The Conspiracy For Your Money Blog.

Finally, I would like to provide Best Wishes for a Happy Holiday Season and a Prosperous New Year!

Be sure to share this post with anyone that you think would benefit from this message… thanks!