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| Home - Industry Article - Aug 06 Issue |
Don’t Let Egos Sink Your Positioning Strategy
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Qualify While Positioning
A good positioning strategy can do more than create awareness and demand for your B2B product or service. Through thoughtful execution of your positioning strategy in marketing campaigns, you can also make your selling more productive by beginning to qualify prospects during the positioning process. But it works only if you are willing to face reality, and recognize that your product or service is best suited for a specific set of prospects within the target audience, not every buyer. That’s why there are usually many products in markets like CRM, Business Intelligence, Corporate Performance Management, ERP, etc.
Very few companies in B2B software sell products designed for every company known to man. There are good fits and less optimum ones. Companies are often reluctant to exclude “anyone with a wallet” from their marketing effort. Others believe their product is so wonderful, everyone should buy it. But trying to be all-inclusive leads to fuzzy positioning and a weak marketing message.
So suppress your ego and swallow your pride. You’ll be more successful. Make it clear in your marketing communications who should consider your product, and, perhaps, who should not. Rigorous qualification from the start has another benefit – you don’t waste precious marketing dollars on the wrong target market.
Scout the Competition
It's pretty easy to learn how competitors are positioning themselves, because they do it in public. So start reading and analyzing print advertisements, marketing collateral and Web sites with an eye to deducing the positioning behind them. A positioning statement frequently appears in the first or last paragraph (or both) of an advertisement, or in a prominent place on the home page of the Web site. A good one should be a clear, concise benefit idea or concept underpinning the executional theme of the advertisement, home page, brochure, etc.
No Competition? No Viable Business?
Some CEOs and executives say they don’t have any competition. “Our software is so different, no one does what we do,” they say. Others simply ignore the competition. The Business Intelligence and Corporate Performance Management (CPM) markets are full of top-notch companies like Cognos, Business Objects, Hyperion and SAS who claim – or have claimed – similar positions around the notion of improved performance through better-informed, more confident, decision-making.
One of the best examples of pretending the competition either doesn’t exist or its position doesn’t matter is the ad campaign initiated by Microsoft Business Solutions in 2004. Big ads promoted the following benefit: “MBS products give you the insight you need to make smarter decisions.” The statement defines a clear, succinct market position. Well done, MBS – except for one thing. The position was almost identical to MBS’ leading competitor, Sage Software, which had occupied the “insight” position, and had developed substantial awareness and credibility in the market.
For two years before the MBS campaign, Sage had positioned itself around “insight,” first using customer testimonials with powerful benefit claims, such as “sales doubled, productivity went up and efficiency improved…” marching to the conclusion, “which is what happens when someone gets a key insight into their business.” Later Sage did a good job of executing the positioning statement: “Best products give you the insight you need to succeed.” Then Microsoft attempted to occupy the identical position, which could not be viewed as a mistake borne of ignorance.
Differentiate or Die
Differentiation is critical to successful positioning of your product, but how do you know that you are making a unique claim? Rather than ignore your competition, determine their positioning strategy, and use your findings to create a perceptual map to see where there’s unclaimed space. As the old baseball maxim put it, you want to “hit it where they ain’t.”
In the marketing classic, “Positioning – The Battle for your Mind,” authors Al Ries and Jack Trout say that knowledge of your competitor’s positioning is just as important as knowing your own.
Ries and Trout lament the fact that “too many companies embark on marketing and advertising as if the competitor’s position did not exist. They advertise their products in a vacuum and are disappointed when their messages fail to get through.”
What Ries and Trout left unsaid is the reason competitors fail to differentiate – they are too wrapped up in their company and their product to give their customers and their competitors the respectful attention they deserve. It’s a form of business egotism. Put your ego aside. You may be surprised by what it is preventing you from seeing.
Lawson Abinanti is Co-Founder of Messages That Matter, a consulting firm that helps B2B software and services companies create compelling message strategies that build awareness and demand. Lawson is a professional journalist with 15 years of executive management experience in the software industry. He has been responsible for marketing, business development and sales at several B2B software companies including Navision, Applix, TM1 Software and Timeline. For article feedback, contact Lawson at labinan@attglobal.net
 
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