When you start a new online business, there are so many things to do that it is easy to overlook or postpone addressing some of the most important aspects of marketing. One of the decisions that you can’t afford to omit from your early planning is the positioning of your business.
Basically a marketing position identifies your unique place in your niche. The key word here is unique. What makes your enterprise different from your competitors? What features and benefits do you offer your target customers or clients that the other players don’t?
-Customer Service – Nearly all businesses claim they have great service. If you can provide exceptional service compared to your competitors, your customers will remember you. I remember calling a grouchy handyman to try to get him to my home for a plumbing emergency on a weekend. He acted like he didn’t want my business and then told me it was going to be $200 for him just to show up, no thanks. I called roto-router who gave me tremendous service, a guarantee, and the bill was less than $200. I now use that company for all my plumbing.
-Extraordinary Features and Appealing Benefits – Positioning is not just about what makes you different, it’s also about what you emphasize. Folgers announces to the world that it’s “mountain grown coffee” ( a feature). Guess what? Any brand of coffee is mountain grown. Folgers just claimed this feature before anyone else thought to mention it. What is there that none of your competitors are talking about, yet?
-Price Point – This doesn’t necessarily mean you have the lowest price. You may be the most expensive in town, and that’s OK if you convince your customers you’re worth it.
-Negative Features – Is there something you don’t have that annoys customers of your competitors? I’m not saying use negative advertising, but just mention the feature and tie it to a benefit. I’m annoyed when I have to pay for parking to go shopping at Mall. Instead of touting free parking, a mall that wants to speak to me might declare, “you’ll never have to pay for parking”. This drives home the pain of shopping with a competitor without going negative.
-Authority – Many companies tout how long they’ve been in business. All of these things build trust in the mind of the consumer. What trust-building factors do you have that the competition does not?
-Others – Whatever you can think of that allows you to demonstrate that you are different from your competitors (in a good way, of course) is useful. That’s really all positioning is. Spend some time thinking through each phase of your business to see what you can point to in order to stand apart.
You will spend a great deal of time later developing your online business. You may even make subtle modifications to your positioning as you experiment and discover what is working for you and what isn’t. Immediately, though, you must start working on your marketing positions. They are too important to postpone.