A-Z Tips For Including Competitive Positioning In Your Content Elements

Content. It's at the center, and actually has been since advertising began in the late 1800s. Only now, because of the internet and search, content has taken over as the driving force for creating the customers that provide your business revenue.

Without it no one knows what you and your stuff do. Remember AIDA - content is AIDA. Attraction. Interest. Desire. Action.

AIDA used to be a process, to be achieved by many methods over time.

Welcome To Now Guys. ---> AIDA isn't a process - AIDA is the result.

If you haven't realized yet, all your marketing tools and old marketing thoughts and precepts are old. They'll probably have limited effect, but against search and websites and mobile and convergence - I'm betting the effect is going to be pretty small. Negligeable. Like an ant compared to a grizzly bear. Size, speed, strength.

In fact, consider that: who'd you rather be, the ant or the grizzly? The ant: Able to carry 10x your weight and take about half an hour to travel the distance of one grizzly stride? Un-noticed? Or the grizzly: a giant, dangerous, fast, cunning hunter and independent, able to cover hundreds of miles in a day, fierce competitor, deadly defender? Hmmm. Anyone who voted for the ant is in the wrong place.

The change in business and how businesses market and sell has already happened. As a marketer (Grizz for short) it's your job to find, create, nurture, and warm up leads for sales to close so you can get back to those customers and build loyalty. You own the revenue channel: it's your marketing pipeline and the fuel for that change is content.

This is step four in making sure what you're doing is timely, relevant, informative or entertaining, and engaging to the people you want - wherever they happen to be in the buy cycle. Step one: is Positioning A-Z for the high-level strategy, Strategy A-Z for the operational planning, Branding A-Z for tactical tips on how to make whatever you say your own, and this page.

A is for Action

If it isn't moving it might be dead. Action, speed and movement are defining your world even as you're reading this. Maybe you just lost a customer through defection. Oh oh, one of your nurtured leads just downloaded from a competing website. Content is the fuel that drives the action, from pulling attention in to moving a lead through the pipeline. Make sure there's energy, empathy, urgency and action steps in every content element you produce.

B Is For Battle (for share of mind & share of wallet)

Your world is full of competition. Just like mine. What are you doing to win the battle for share of mind and share of wallet in the marketplace? While useful, don't spend time comparing yourself to the competition. Instead, determine what your customer outcomes need to be and how they see and describe them and build your positioning to match - you've just created a product to market match or service to market match.

C is for Challenge (the status quo)

True game changers do just that, they change the game and the rules. Build a market position that changes your category by listening to your ideal customers and current customers. What do they want and how can you give them the business outcomes that's going to solve their problems? Challenge the content status quo and you're sure to get noticed and read and watched all over.

D is for Different (stand out and be noticed)

Positioning is about building uniqueness and difference into the fabric of your business in such a way that it becomes your business DNA. The same is required with content. With so few businesses producing "engaging" content (whatever that means), when you mix in your business personality into your problem solving content, you create a powerful message that attracts more people and leaves those other businesses in the dust.

E is for Extend (an invitation to build a relationship over time)

Your content can and should be an invitation. Your content marketing strategy includes reminders to create goals and objectives for your content campaigns. Each goal you plan to achieve can be mapped back to an action and invitation that creates, extends and builds upon your relationship with customers, leads and prospects. Make your content different by also mapping content to your unique perspectives.

F is for Form

Form relationships that matter by using your positioning to add depth and market category perspective to your communication messages. The insight here is to ensure that what is intended to be communicated is communicated. Use a creative strategy tool to help your content creators stay on-destination (move the viewer/user to take a specific action) for each campaign element they create.

G is for Guide

Your positioning establishes your area of expertise and unique approach to problem solving for your targets. In describing and explaining your positioning you will be providing a guide for your customers, leads and prospects to follow. Your guidance will be inspiring and practical, providing the means and the "how" for them to solve their problems - and create more sales opportunities for you.

H is for Hook

High-level positioning and how it's used and described in your content marketing efforts should provide the hook that attches your big idea campaign creative back to the "What", "Why", "How" of what you do. It's the business outcomes you can achieve that make the perceived difference between you and the competition. Clear positioning = unambiguous problem solving.

I is for Invite

This may sound surprising: your positioning needs to be invitational and embracing in nature. Think of your positioning as the personality of your business. Positioning is like a personality for one fundamental reason, there's no two identical personalities in this world. No one has ever successfully copied a personality. Make sure your positioning is unique so your competitors can't copy you.

J is for Jangle

Jangle, jangle, jangle. Can you hear that? That's the sound of your unique difference making some noise in the marketplace - and getting the attention and interest of your ideal customer. Not every positioning is going to be noisy per say, however you do want to attract attention to yourself, and the best way to do that is by being different. AIDA starts with Attraction.

K is for Kinetic

Kinetic: do you remember what kinetic energy is? It's the energy a body possesses by virtue of being in motion. How dynamic is your positioning. The entire purpose of positioning is to create a business solution your competition can't copy successfully. Part of the success of any positioning is that it be dynamic and possess the power to inspire and move customers, prospects and leads to take action and buy.

L is for Launching Pad

Okay, here we are at the beginning: your positioning is the launching pad for all you do, from operations and what you don't do - to ideal customer targets and disqualification of unsuitable sales candidates. Your unique positioning provides a narrowed perspective on your operational activities and your messaging. Your content and online activities will necessarily be prescribed by the boundaries of your positioning.

M is for Magical

"Can positioning actually be magical?", I hear you ask. "Seriously?" I think so. When conducted and managed effectively, competitive positioning puts your business in a place your competition can never replicate. It means you avoid parity and commoditization. And that's pretty magical. Apple's iPhone(TM) and iPad(TM) have been copied, but the replicas lack the authenticity of the Apple merchandise - and the replicas don't have the ecosystem of iTunes to power additional revenue beyond a single item purchase. Positioning in this case extends the lifetime value of the customer.

N is for Nip

Avoid being copied. Nip competition in the bud. Stop them in their tracks. It all amounts to the same: competitive positioning is a strategy to do your stuff in a unique way for a select group of targets that makes your business and your stuff super-attractive to your ideal customer, leads and prospects. It also makes.

O is for Obvious

When you start to look at your business from the outside in and from other different angles, you gain an appreciation ofor what your customers see. The primary problem with most businesses is a complete lack of ability to articulate why me as a customer should be doing business with them over someone else. That outside looking in perspective gets you to the point of obvious. Sometimes competitive positioning is obvious.

P is for Perspective

Perspective is a close cousin to context. Your competitive positioning is going to give you a unique perspective on your category. Everything you say in your communications will be from the perspective that makes sense. It could be efficiency for lower costs and lower prices - or taking an opposite approach and seeing efficiency as eco-friendly green management where prices stay the same and margins increase.

Q is for Quintessential

There's a root word there: essential. Positioning is essential for creating a unique business system adapted to your process that your nearest competitor can't replicate. When properly positioned a business can and it's brands can stand for the best, the most perfect, the typical example of a quality customers find valuable. Is your stuff considered to be the obvious choice, the quintessential widget customers are willing to pay a premium for?

R is for Reflect

Positioning should reflect some desire and consumer wants to be effective and rewarding. Your competitive positioning needs to reflect something back to your ideal customer that they want. By being unique, and constantly reinforcing the positioning message you begin to own the consumer share of mind. We don't go for market share, we go for mind share. Personal; experiential; satisfying.

S is for Separate

Your business can be faceless in the crowd - or it can be separate and apart. Positioning provides the fundamental distinctiveness that makes a business attract attention and be noticed. The old formula AIDA still serves: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. Competitive positioning means you have something different you bring to the conversation. Your competitors are all saying the same thing; boring.

T is for Tangible

If your customers, leads and prospects can't experience your positioning in some real way, you might not have a true competitive positioning that adds value. Be wary of weasel words and meaningless phrases. Most of all, keep in mind that what we're after is customer conviction. And I'd say that the only way to battle skepticism is to build conviction. Power positioning will help build belief in your stuff and your business.

U is for Uncommon

You might have heard the phrase "remarkable content" recently. It's generally very hard to create remarkable content if your business isn't remarkable. It's like pushing water uphill. Design and implement a competitive positioning over time and you'll discover that your difference and context and unique approach makes it easy to come up with remarkable content. Only followers find remarkable difficult.

V is for Vision

Positioning is strategy and strategy is positioning. Let some else debate which comes first. Positioning provides the competitive difference that creates value in the customer's eyes. Start with positioning then plan how it will unfold over time (strategy) and then give your positioning (personality) some branding (style, like a fashion wardrobe) that makes it accessible to your ideal customer.

W is for Watch

How well do you know your ideal customer? Have you talked to your ideal customer lately. Keeping an eye out for what they're thinking, saying and doing helps your strategy augment your competitive position over time. Your foundational position will not change. How it is expressed and communicated through brand does and will adapt to market conditions and changing tastes and beliefs. Make sure you know what those are.

X is for X-section

Competitive positioning can sometimes be contrary to popular supposition. A cross section can be extremely profitable. Think different demographics. Your positioning might create and communicate a superior appeal which crosses traditional boundaries. Some of the world's favourite brands appeal across all demographics. Universal? Not really, just simply iresistable to us.

Y is for You

Competitive positioning, when done correctly and thoroughly, is all about your ideal customer's YOU. It's personal and valuable to them. It's a way of being in the world that brings pleasure to them, and solves some kind of problem. Once you conquer the habit of looking outward from the top of the pyramid - and start peering inwards from your customers, leads and prospects perspective, you'll see the value.

Z is for Zany

A good dose of ridiculous with a sprinkling of absurd is a good way to start thinking about competitive positioning. Dropthe best-in-class thinking. If you're subscribing to best in class thinking you know you're a follower somewhere in the middle of a crowd of look-alikes. Stop the analysis and get out and experience. Listen and enjoy and from that you give yourself permission to brainstorm.