With a projects for a wide range of new clients currently on our minds, we’ve been dealing with a wide range of questions on subject of positioning a business for a (moving) target audience. As pointed out on the intro to our site, there are two poles in the positioning discussion:
1) SPECIALIZED: Focused, Efficient, Limited
2) DIVERSIFIED: Broad, Expansive, Universal
As designers/marketers we all cringe at the idea of directing our efforts so tightly in one case, and doing a lot but not saying anything in the other. Obviously most businesses strive to land somewhere between; attract the right clients without painting yourself into a corner. And rightly so. Given our attempts to market our own services, we can tell you that marketing a multifaceted service to any and all businesses anywhere in the world is a tall, if not, bewildering order.
So, where do you put down the chalk to gain a little focus and get started on your marketing efforts? How do you move forward with positioning a business that doesn’t want to commit to segmentation, but still needs to say something unique and expects results?
One approach is to figure out the core interest of the business (which is different than a core competency) and put all efforts into owning that interest. Products and services all hang from (or support, depending on your perspective) that core interest, therefore a new product or service will be a logical tangent. From a marketing perspective what would otherwise be something to force-fit into the neat and tidy existing product line up (or brand story) is now proof of how committed the business is to their core interest.
Another approach is to look at the client’s business in various time frames and take a position that is viable now, but allows for simple escape routes should the business change. Questions like “What new products can we reasonably expect in the next year, two years or five years?”, “What markets are you in now, and which will be easy for you to transition to in the coming years?” and “If this business model is really successful, what are the next steps in expansion?” By projecting what the business will look like in five years, the current positioning can be geared to make adaptation smoother (for the marketing department and the design/ad agency) and less confusing to clients/customers when it happens.
Besides, planned evolution is always an easier sell than revolution from the client perspective. Achieving evolution means things are going well for the most part. Revolution is usually far less friendly to those at the top.