Brand positioning

Positioning has two parts: one sentence and the evidence behind it. The sentence names who you are for, how you differ and why anyone should believe it. The evidence is concrete: technology, service, people, price, warranty. It is built in a workshop with the owner and the sales team, grounded in customer interviews and a competitor map, and it happens before any logo or video.

An industrial door supplier was convinced he was winning on price and squeezed his margins accordingly. Customer interviews showed people chose him for the service crew that arrives within twenty four hours. Positioning was rewritten around that single fact, and it changed the website and the sales conversation. It cost no more than one decent video, it simply had to come first.

The process is light on client time and heavy on honesty. Five to eight customer interviews, a competitor overview, a half day workshop, then the sentence is written and tested. Two to four weeks. We need access to real customers, not only the owner's opinion, plus the list of jobs you won and lost last year with the reason attached.

The commonest mistake is trying to be for everyone. A brand for everyone is a brand for nobody, because it gives no reason to choose it. Good positioning excludes somebody. The second mistake is promising what operations cannot deliver. If the sentence says speed while installation starts in six weeks, you damage yourself more than by writing nothing at all.

We open by asking for three lost jobs and why they fell through. Positioning is sharpest there. A rule you can borrow: put a competitor's name into your sentence instead of your own. If it still holds, that is not positioning, it is a description of the industry, and you write again. A brand archetype grows out of the finished sentence.