We fell into the trap we help others avoid - brand positioning explained

My coach said something to me the other day that stuck. "Ian, everything you're telling me about your business, all the brilliant things you do for clients. I can't see any of it on your website. I'm not really feeling it on LinkedIn either."

What? Of course you can. I took another look, with fresh eyes. He was right. It's just another agency website, showing and saying more or less the same things as everyone else. (BTW: I’m a bit uncomfortable saying this).

My coach, Phil, has a habit of landing a hard truth at exactly the right moment. I was deflated at first, then fired up to fix it.

Being "one of many" was never going to make a customer choose us over anyone else. The same is true for any business. With so much choice out there, being different isn't up for debate. It's a necessity.

In our world, great work, a friendly and talented team, years of experience, and a confident approach. They're all just prerequisites to reach the starting gate, and they don't win you the race.

So we need to dig deeper and get to the heart of what makes us different. We need to be clearer about who we are and the real value we provide, then say it plainly and consistently, with no compromises. Get that right and we become the obvious choice for the people and companies we want to work with.

In agency terms, the job is to define our positioning. Put more simply, it’s deciding “what we want to be known for”.

What does brand positioning actually mean?

At its absolute simplest, positioning is the space you want to occupy in your customer's mind. It answers one question: when people think of my business, what's the one thing I want them to picture?

Car companies make this easy to see. They sell the same basic product, but they aim at completely different buyers:

• Volvo owns safety. They're not chasing fastest or sexiest. They want to be the car you trust with your family.

• Ferrari owns status and speed. Fuel economy and boot space aren't the point. They want to be the ultimate reward for the ultra-wealthy.

• Tesla owns the future. They're not really selling electric cars; they're selling innovation and whatever's coming next (including a robot in every home, etc., etc.).

Three companies, all making cars out of steel, rubber and glass, and they rarely compete for the same customer.

Where we'd gone wrong

All the work we're proud of, how we challenge organisations, how transformational our branding and design work can be, how we help clients evolve and grow. We weren't communicating it well enough.

Clients would tell us afterwards, "Wow, this has made such a difference." It’s lovely to hear. But it makes me wonder whether they'd expected it. We knew the value was there. Had we ever actually said so out loud?

We'd fallen into the same trap as so many of our clients. We lean on our own buzzwords, like brand strategy, identity systems, targeted messaging, creativity. But those are labels, not what people are actually looking for.

Take brand strategy

The label is "brand strategy", one of our services.

The work is what we actually do: helping a business work out who they are and why they matter, crystallising it in simple terms, understanding what their customers really think, and finding the distinctive space they can own.

The outcome is what that work is for: more members, more conversions, a bigger share of the market, a new kind of customer, the best job applicants.

The impact is what those outcomes add up to: the big, hairy goal you don't normally say out loud. Like becoming the name everyone in your category thinks of first. Or even becoming the only name in a completely new category.

In the past, we’ve talked too much about the label, and our clients only ever cared about the impact.

But, if we all follow that thinking too closely, every website and sales deck would carry the same headline: save time, reduce costs, make money. Often that's true, but it’s not different. It's worth going a layer deeper, understanding why a customer came to you in the first place, the problem as they describe it, and then showing your product or service as the obvious way to solve it.

The interesting stuff is usually hidden in the details: the moments that delight, or just quietly remove some friction.

Why is it so hard to do on yourself?

The hard truth is that we do all of this instinctively for our clients, yet doing it for ourselves has been genuinely difficult. It's near impossible to think objectively from the inside looking out.

We tell clients to put the customer at the centre of everything, to get inside their heads and understand what they actually need, in their own words. Simple in principle. Much harder when you're immersed in your own world 24/7.

So, we're now doing our own research: we’re completing a deeper and broader competitor analysis, looking hard at reviews and customer conversations, and yes, using AI to help us reflect on who our customer really is. It's already surfacing things that surprise us. We looked at a first pass, felt rather pleased with ourselves, then realised it wasn't good enough and went again. We're still going.

Three questions worth sitting with

If you want to get your own positioning right, these are the questions to answer honestly:

• How does your brand meet the real needs of your audience?

• What makes you memorable, and why should anyone care about what you offer?

• In a sea of sameness, what gets you into a buyer's final three?

This isn't a marketing tactic you bolt on at the end. It’s central to your whole strategy, and it's worth taking time to get it right.

Why am I sharing this out loud? Well, if it can happen to us, it can happen to anyone. The subject matters more than it used to, and it deserves attention.

Plus, saying it out loud keeps me accountable, which I need. And some of it might be useful to you. If you've spotted this in your own business, I'd like to hear about it.

We're only getting started, and there's plenty still to do: a new website, an evolved brand, a refined sales process and outbound approach – all of it. But this time, I know we'll end up somewhere much stronger.