Selling the Invisible: a field Guide to Modern Marketing \(Biz Books to Go\) pdfdrive com

Don’t start by positioning your service. Instead, leverage the position you
have.
Creating Your Positioning Statement
Before you create a positioning statement, one warning: Don’t confuse a position
with a positioning statement.
A position (or statement of position) is a cold-hearted, no-nonsense statement
of how you are perceived in the minds of prospects. It is your position.
A positioning statement, by contrast, states how you wish to be perceived. It
is the core message you want to deliver in every medium, including elevators

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and airport waiting areas, to influence the perceptions of your service.
You can establish your positioning statement by answering the following
questions:
Who: Who are you?
What: What business are you in?
For whom: What people do you serve?
What need: What are the special needs of the people you serve?
Against whom: With whom are you competing? What’s different: What
makes you different from those competitors?
So: What’s the benefit? What unique benefit does a client derive from your
service?
To illustrate, take Bloomingdale’s: (Who): “Bloomingdale’s
(What) are fashion-focused department stores (For whom) for trend-
conscious, upper-middle-class shoppers
(What need) looking for high-end products. (Against whom) Unlike other
department stores, (What’s different) Bloomingdale’s provides unique
merchandise in a theatrical setting
(so) that makes shopping entertaining.”
This was the Bloomingdale’s position for years. Rather than make its
“What’s different?” couture and high-end fashions (Bergdorf Goodman’s niche),
or even fashion at all, Bloomingdale’s positioned itself based on the experience
of going there.
You can find other models for creating your position statement. None work
better than this.