Positioning and Presenting

The Art of Positioning

#1 problem - talking about what you do concisely. Two points are market definition and value proposition.

It will take many hours. Early on it’s a living document, but eventually you wanr to freeze it.

“The Foundations”

Who do you do things for, market position.

What are you doing, value proposition.

Once you have the foundations down, use them as the yardstick for your other communications.

Case study of Bitpass

Phase 1 - everything is free

Phase 2 - Paid subscriptions

Phase 3 - Individual purchases

Primary - content sellers, Secondary - digital content buyers.

It can take an hour to get a group to agree to what primary is. Just follow the cash, they should be the biggest part of the pie at the point at which you break even. What comes out of finding these groups is a clear market definition.

What Bitpass decided was that the primary are teir one providers.

Next identify the burning problem. The only thing selling these days are painkillers (not steroids or vitamins). Then identify symptoms (how do I know if I have this problem?). Then put them all back together and try to find common aspects, and then refine the burning problem.

Once you have the burning problem you need to find the pain associated with it. Your key constituent must be able to instantly identify with the Burning Problem and Big Pain.

What kind of emotion is associated with the problem or pain?

Create the company tagline. The tagline should “hoom em” and get them to ask for more.

Market definition is pulled together from those previous answers (who, pain, and emotion).

What do you really do. List everything, and pick stuff out later on. Boil them down once you have the list. This is the composite essence of what you do.

Your value proposition. Category + position parameters + benefits.

So you end up with who, pain, emotion on one side and painkillers and benefits. Yin and Yang.

Generally things take the form of the problem being in the negative, and the solution positive.

Competition, make a page for each competitor. This is done from the point of view of outsiders. Pick everyone who a knowledgable outsider would think is a competitor. Be comprehensive, and consider grouping is there are a lot.

Pull all the pages together and determine how you are different. We are unlike Company who does stuff because we do otherstuff. Everyone should differentiate themselves from the competitors at every chance.

Us vs. Them Mission Statements. Missions can talk about the company or talk about what the company can do for customers.

Take the time to do it right. Its a great team building experience. And you can reuse the bits and pieces for other efforts.