So What, Who Cares?

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.

Do you have your own best practices when it comes to positioning and messaging? I'd love to hear them if you're willing to share.

Thanks for reading.

Kerry McClenahan

Next month: Customer reference programs in the deep tech industry.