9 Marketing Strategies & Tactics for the Positioning Era

Business is not a sport like golf or swimming, it’s a close quarters contact sport like hockey or football. Those who succeed play by the rules of the game, not their own alone. This is what we need to do as creative entrepreneurs and startups in order to succeed in today’s incredibly competitive environment.

It’s important to realize that 99% of all businesses fail within the first 5 years. Another way of looking at this is that only 1% of businesses succeed. Below are 9 Marketing Strategies & Tactics to Succeed in the today’s Positioning era. Follow these 9 Strategies & Tactics and you’ll avoid being a part of the 99% of businesses that fail within the first 5 years:

1. Objectivity is the key ingredient supplied by marketing agencies. Be objective yourself, as this gives you a truly competitive advantage. Read 17 Key Insights from Dale Carnegie to ensure you do this consistently and effectively.
2. Words act like mental triggers, triggers which uncover meaning buried in the mind of the prospect. Research your prospects psychology in-person and take research notes not on what they say, but of the frequency certain words specific to your niche are mentioned. These are hot button words. Insert these words into your copy and advertising.
3. Language is the currency of the mind. To think conceptually, you must manipulate words. With the right selection of words you can influence the thinking process itself.
4. To play the game in today’s positioning era, you must make decisions on what your company will be doing long-term. Test everything, throw by the wayside those things which don’t perform. The most important word in marketing: test. (David Ogilvy and Jay Abraham have also said this in the past)
5. Ready, Fire, Aim. Your speed of iteration and response must be flexible and dynamic. Becoming hugely successful in a particular niche isn’t about quality, marketing or anything else other than seizing the initiative before the competitor has a chance to get established.
6. Objectivity wins. When you’re point-blank close to your business, your convictions, opinions, emotions and all the rest of that ego stuff gets involved. That’s not part of the equation. That’s the prime function of ad agencies. To be successful in the positioning era, you must be brutally objective. You must try to eliminate all ego from the decision-making process.
7. One of the most critical aspects of positioning is being able to evaluate products objectively & see how they are viewed by customers & prospects. Work back from the prospect end-goals backwards to create & architect solutions for.
8. The difficulty is finding an opening position near the center of your market spectrum. Don’t go extreme or you’re playing with big risk. If you risk a lot, prospects will too.
9. The essence of positioning is sacrifice. You must be willing to give up something in order to establish a unique position in the market.

• “We’re better than our competitors” is not repositioning. It’s comparative advertising, and not very effective. There’s a psychological flaw in the advertisers reasoning which the prospect is quick to detect. Therefore you must have fact-based editorial advertising.
• Don’t use the competitor as a benchmark for your product or brand. Present all the facts in plain english for the prospect to decide. Be objective about it.

Is Repositioning Legal?

It’s been legal for two decades.

• To establish a position you must often not only name the competitors but also ignore most of the old advertising rules as well.
• Although highly effective, most positioning campaigns stir-up a host of complaints. Many advertisers deplore the use of such tactics. Just present facts, and you have nothing to lose.
• To be successful in this over communicated society of ours, you have to play the game by the rules that society sets. Not your own. Done honestly & fairly, it keeps the competition on their toes.

Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind is a book written by Al Ries and Jack Trout. This book defined a new approach to communication, and may have defined the new era of marketing called “Positioning”. This is a book is as much about marketing as it is human psychology.