FINDING YOUR BRAND’S POSITIONING SWEET SPOT

BETWEEN BLUE SKYAND BULLET POINTS

10 MARKETING STRATEGIES TO ACTIVATE THE ENGAGED BUYER

THIS PRESENTATION IS FOR YOU IF:

You want your marketing to do a better job of supporting your customer’s buying process

You never seem to get on the right RFPs because the market has an outdated or incomplete understanding of what you do

Your current marketing doesn’t speak to your aspirations as a company

You make business and marketing decisions, but they don’t feel driven from a common foundation that would direct your behaviors more consistently

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If any or all of these are true, you may have a positioning problem...

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THE NEW POSITIONING IMPERATIVEIt’s not news that today’s buyers are often putting their professional reputation, social standing, or business success at stake when they make a major purchasing decision.

What is new is that these buyers are more engaged than they’ve ever been in the buying process, whether they’re looking at peer reviews or conducting their own research.

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THE NEW POSITIONING IMPERATIVEThey’re also unlikely to contact your company until they have advanced a significant part of the way through the buying process.

Bottom Line: If your positioning...

Doesn’t truly reflect what makes your brand unique relative to what the market needs

Doesn’t deliver marketing experiences that enlighten and guide buyers

Doesn’t make buyers confident about their buying decisions

...they are likely to pass you by.

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WHAT’S YOUR CLAIM TO VALUE?For many companies, defining a position is the first step in creating a role that reflects their most powerful claim to value in the market. Yet this is exactly where most companies get stuck.

They either:

They aim too high with their position and never claim anything with distinction, or

They aim too low and rely on the product features to tell their story.

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B

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For 25 years PJA has developed successful integrated marketing campaigns for companies from Fortune 500 leaders to emerging startups by focusing on what truly sets them apart in their industries and where they can take their customers.

This presentation highlights what you need to do to stand out today.

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CHOOSING A GOOD POSITION MEANS MAKING HARD CHOICES

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What does it mean to make a hard choice? And what is good positioning in the age of the Engaged Buyer?

A successful position must do several things:

- Clarify who you are and who you serve in meeting your customer’s needs

- Have enough aspiration to help people see beyond today, but deliver enough detail to give a position some traction in the market

- Signal the role your brand plays in helping buyers make good decisions

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Here is the process we’ve applied for our clients:

Ask the right questions to set the context

Gather external input from analysts, editors, VCs, customers, etc., combined with internal knowledge

from Sales, IT, Product Marketing and Executives

Gather the right decision-makers and make some hard choices

WHAT? WHO? WHERE?

PRODUCTS

SERVICES

LEADERSHIP

CUSTOMER NEEDS

CATEGORY

CULTURE

Test and vet in the market

To build a strong position, start by tackling three sets of questions:

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What are we solving for?

- What primary problem is a new position going to solve?

- Is it correcting an outdated perception?

- Is it communicating value and benefits in a way you haven’t before?

- Is it laying out a new approach for our company?

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Who are we solving for?

Who is the ideal audience to get this message?

Choosing one target audience with the most decision-making power helps you to land on a distinctive tone. You can version the position later if you need to.

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Where does the core of our value spring from?

- Is it from your products or the way you support those products for buyers along or with partners?

- Is it based on your ability to push the market forward with innovative vision?

- Or do buyers realize more social, emotional, or professional value by working with you?

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KEEP A POSITIONING SCORECARDAn effective way to organize your thoughts is use a positioning scorecard that allows you to boil down different internal and external claims and capabilties into a powerful claim to value.

DOWNLOAD POSITIONING SCORECARD

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ASSEMBLE A GROUP OF DECISION-MAKERS AND MAKE SOME HARD CHOICESUsing a scorecard like the one on the previous page is a great way to guide a discussion among your company’s decision-makers.

Ask tough questions as you assemble your positioning building blocks.

- Is there one thing the buyer needs from the category that only you provide?

- Where are you proactive in ways that your competitors are reactive?

- How is your company helping to drive and even define a powerful trend in the greater culture?

Focus in until you see a few areas where a claim to value feels credible and substantive.

Write them out (50 words or less) and hone them until you feel confident they reflect your company.

Then test and vet the best statement.

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BRING YOUR POSITION TO LIFE

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Let’s say you’ve defined a great position and you’ve worked hard to define a bold claim in the market. You’ve tested it with the constituents that mean most to you—customers, editors, analysts, executives, other employees—and refined your thinking to something that you believe will work. Now you’re ready to get it out into the market quickly.

What’s your next step?

Here are a few case studies from PJA clients.

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The best way to bring your position to life is to use it as the inspiration for some creative directions. Consider two or three theme lines and conceptual digital sketches that use a few key deliverables to communicate and express each theme.

1 FROM POWERFUL POSITION TO COMPELLING CREATIVE PLATFORM

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WHY TRINITY PHARMA?

WE TURN DATA INTO INSIGHTS SO FAST THEY’RE STILL MEANINGFUL

CREATIVE DIRECTION 1 CREATIVE DIRECTION 2

CREATIVE DIRECTION 3

In our creative platform for SAVVIS, PJA turned something physical — IT infrastructure — on its head, demonstrating that it could be provided as a service in a way transformative to the business.

2 FROM SILENT COMMODITY TO BUSINESS DRIVER

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TRUST SAVVIS TO DELIVER YOUR IT INFRASTRUCTURE AND NETWORK AS A SECURE, MANAGED SERVICE THAT RESPONDS TO YOUR MOST IMPORTANT CUSTOMER, COMPETITIVE, AND COMPLIANCE CHALLENGES

CREATIVE DIRECTION 1

CREATIVE DIRECTION 2

If legacy perceptions drag down your brand, consider a manifesto-style ad or poster to help buyers understand that you are not only aware of new challenges, you already have solved for them.

3 FROM FAST FOLLOWER TO SETTING THE DIRECTION

COMPUTER ASSOCIATES CLOUD MANIFESTO AD

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Sometimes being ubiquitous can equal being invisible. Demonstrating through positioning that you enable whole industries can open buyers’ eyes to your true business value.

4 FROM COMPONENT SUPPLIER TO CONNECTIVITY LEADER

POWERFUL POSITIONING ALIGNS ALL CREATIVE

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POSITIONING EXTENDED TO SOCIAL AND THOUGHT LEADERSHIP MARKETING

So what’s the return on investment on doing all this work? We’ve seen three major benefits in working with our clients.

1You earn the right to tell your story: the more complex your solution, the more likely you are to earn that right if you provide a compelling entry point to your story.

2You become part of a conversation that goes way beyond your products, and includes customers, analysts, editors, and other stakeholders.

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You help to make yourself the choice before the choice. In other words, your position is strong enough that your reputation precedes you—in part because you have preceded the competition, in part because you truly engage with the buyer.

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Ultimately, we believe that any position you stake out should speak directly to the customers’ world.That means playing to your buyer’s aspirations as well as their hunger for details. In other words, delivering messages into the space between the blue sky and the bullet points. Build your position with the right elements of both, using the people who really matter in your company, and you’ll ensure that you have relevance in today’s turbulent marketing world.

Remember: If you claim to be too many things, you’ll be remembered for none.

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YOUR NEXT STEP: DOWNLOAD BLUE SKY TO BULLET POINTS

PJA has developed a process we call the Market Narrative. It provides a road map that can lead you to a working position and powerful brand role in a matter of weeks.

DOWNLOAD CONVERSATION MATRIX

DOWNLOAD 4Cs ANALYSIS

OR JUST GET IN TOUCH ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Mike O’ToolePresident

Mike oversees agency operations in Cambridge and San Francisco, advises CMOs on brand, positioning, and digital strategy, blogs for Forbes.com and is host of PJA Radio’s The Unconventionals.

Hugh KennedyEVP, Planning + Partner

Hugh works closely with C-level clients at companies such as Red Hat, Boston Scientific and Veracode to understand buyers, define positions, and translate the results into effective integrated marketing programs.

PJA Advertising + MarketingGreg Straface

VP, Business Development

gstraface@agencypja.com

(617) 234-7371

@agencypja

For nearly 25 years, PJA has developed winning positions for both startup and Fortune 500 companies, focusing on what truly sets them apart and capturing a compelling vision for buyers of where they want to go in their industries and where they can take their customers We regularly hear from CEOs, employees and VCs that “no one has expressed what we do as clearly as you have.”

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