What do we mean when we talk about positioning?

Your company’s positioning determines how you are perceived and compared in your market place by all your stakeholders including employees, suppliers, customers and prospects.

One of the biggest struggles for many businesses is clearly defining what their business is. Much of our work involves helping companies decide what makes them different and then determine their positioning.

The symptoms of unclear positioning

How well do you understand the dynamics of your business, its culture and most importantly your customer clusters and how they make purchasing decisions?  A business struggling to identify its point of difference will quickly recognise a set of issues or symptoms that are significantly impacting the business. Typically these symptoms include: unclear and inconsistent sales messages; customers regularly demanding or expecting discounts; an anxious sales force lacking confidence and therefore reluctant to charge a premium price for the products and services.; an extensive range of new product and service extensions that create further distraction from the core focus of the business, using up valuable resources and confusing customers even more.

Sound familiar?  Don’t panic you are not alone

The most exciting aspect for us as a business is helping business’s see the light and define a clear positioning strategy. Often it’s a light bulb moment for our clients and you can see how this ignites in them the motivation to streamline what they say and do about their business.

The main benefits clear positioning brings to your business include:

• You will have a compelling story to tell everyone about your business that your employees, suppliers and customers will easily see and appreciate its significance to them.
• With the right amount of substantiation your sales team will have the confidence to sell this story and control the sales cycle.
• You shouldn’t have to compete on price and discount your services because your potential customers trust your positioning and be assured by your confidence in what you offer.

Exigent Marketing. Specialising in marketing, branding and creative design solutions for SME companies based in Twickenham working with business to business clients in West London, Chiswick, Twickenha, & Teddington as well as technology clients in Reading and Berkshire area. www.exigentmarketing.co.uk

Does your business have the “er” factor

Your customers and prospects need to be able to see very quickly why they should buy from you. On a previous post we mentioned that many company mission statements use words like leading, biggest, oldest, cheapest to describe what they believe makes them different. We recommend however that a business focuses on what makes them genuinely different and focus on the words that make these differences stand out. For example is your company cleverer, faster, friendlier or better than other businesses offering the same or similar products or services as you?

Finding your “er” factor

Finding a point of difference or standing out from your competition isn’t always straightforward and we spend much of our time helping our clients determine this. How do we do this? By challenging the thinking within the organisation from inside out and outside in. Spending time listening to the feedback from the senior management team, the operational staff and customers gives us a very good insight into what the company is good and not so good at delivering.

In most instances there is a clear disparity between what the management team believe customers want and what the customers think of them as a business.

Exigent Marketing. Specialising in marketing, branding and creative design solutions for SME companies based in Twickenham working with business to business clients in West London, Chiswick, Twickenha, & Teddington as well as technology clients in Reading and Berkshire area. www.exigentmarketing.co.uk

If your first approach to winning new business is to cut your prices you are well on the road to not only losing valuable profits and credibility you will risk seriously eroding your brand and its values. So why do it?

In previous posts we discuss differentiation and making your company and brand stand out from the competition. Easier said than done I hear you say. However, if you do take the time to create a clear and differentiated proposition your prospective customers will see straight away that you are match for what they are looking for and are therefore less likely to compare you on price.

We appreciate that there will be times where  you will have to negotiate terms but ideally your first engagement with a prospective new client should not be about how much you charge or how much your products or services cost. We suggest you do the following to attract customers that are looking for the value you can deliver rather than the pounds they can save.

Know what your customers and prospects want

Know your market place and understand why your customers are buying from you. Remember to ask them now and then and not always assume you know what they want.

Know your competition

Look for those companies offering a similar service or product offering to yours. What are they doing differently or the same? Learn why they are winning new business and why you are losing out on your sales pitches against them.

Know your market

Keep abreast of changes taking place in the market place. Adapt and evolve to the changes that will affect you and your customers. Regularly update your customers of what’s happening too.

Know your stuff

Demonstrate your knowledge by becoming an expert. Participate in trade events, expert panels in trade and relevant business publications. Win awards for doing things differently and better. Then communicate this knowledge to your customers and prospects. Reassure them constantly that their business is safe in your hands.

Exigent Marketing. Specialising in marketing, branding and creative design solutions for SME companies based in Twickenham working with business to business clients in West London, Chiswick, Twickenha, & Teddington as well as technology clients in Reading and Berkshire area. www.exigentmarketing.co.uk

It’s a well-known fact in business that when times are good and business is steady we invest little time in speaking to existing customers and creating new prospects. However when business slows down we begin to panic and focus our attention on our marketing and what’s in the sales pipeline. Rather than panic we recommend using this time to reflect on your business, your customer base, and the profitability of these customers. More importantly clarify what you do as a business to win more prospects and how you get them to buy from you?

So why doesn’t everyone want to buy your products and services? By turning our opening statement into a question we like to challenge are clients with the following set of questions.

Is your service or product clearly differentiated from your competition?

We find many companies describe themselves in a similar way. How many times for example do you read mission statements that contain the words, leading, biggest, best, oldest, and cheapest?

Is your competition winning business from you?

Perhaps your sales pitch isn’t strong enough or your sales pitch sounds like the competitions and the prospective customer can only make the final purchasing decision based on price

Are you up to date on what’s happening in your market place?

In busy times we are all guilty of not keeping ourselves up to date with changes taking place within our market place. Take some time to review what’s happening, read your trade press or attend a trade event or conference to update your industry knowledge.

Talk to your customers

Quite often when speaking to our clients and new prospects they hold strong beliefs about that their customers want from them. However recently we have undertaken customer research projects and the findings don’t often align to the thinking of the business owners. We advocate taking the time out to speak and meet with customers and discover their pain points and challenges so that you do align your offering more effectively.

Know your prospects

By knowing what makes you different and effectively communicating these differences you will begin to attract prospects that can easily recognise that your product or service offering is a match for them.

Exigent Marketing. Specialising in marketing, branding and creative design solutions for SME companies based in Twickenham working with business to business clients in West London, Chiswick, Twickenha, & Teddington as well as technology clients in Reading and Berkshire area. www.exigentmarketing.co.uk

Recently we ran two Brand Workshops to help two very different businesses define their brand and their competitive positioning. The results and outcomes of these sessions has enabled these companies to restructure their current marketing and business strategies and consider more carefully the tactics they need to deploy to support future business growth and success.

 Our Brand Workshops help businesses on many levels:

• Checking that your management team’s thinking and understanding of the company’s brand and is aligned to where the company’s vision.
• They challenge the thinking and understanding behind what the business perceives its core strengths and weaknesses to be.
• A close look at the competition and how they are positioned also helps the company define its key point of difference in order to compete more effectively and win new business.
• In some cases we also conduct an external audit on a company’s behalf to discover the views and issues of its customers. Feedback on customer service, price, value, product & service delivery are all areas we can research for you. This exercise clearly highlights areas of the business the company needs to reassess and define.

Exigent Marketing. Specialising in marketing, branding and creative design solutions for SME companies based in Twickenham working with business to business clients in West London, Chiswick, Twickenha, & Teddington as well as technology clients in Reading and Berkshire area. www.exigentmarketing.co.uk

We are always so busy helping everyone else with their marketing activities that the words ‘cobblers’ and ‘children’ spring to mind when it comes to promoting ourselves!

Greenfisher is our design partner of many years and we felt it was high time we shared some of their more recent work with everyone.

‘In brief’ says what it is on the tin. We’ve been tackling some really diverse and interesting projects and we hope you’ll be interested to see what we have been up to.

If you would like to receive a copy simply email Ingrid @exigentmarketing.co.uk

or visit the greenfisher website