Overcoming “Not For Me” With Your Marketing Messaging

Overcoming “Not For Me” With Your Marketing Messaging
We’re bombarded with dozens, if not hundreds of messages every single day. Yet many of my clients and students still want to try to deliver a single message aimed at multiple targets. Entrepreneurs, especially, are not comfortable narrowing their target because they worry that’s akin to leaving money on the table. But here’s the...

Netflix: Building a World Class Brand

Netflix: Building a World Class Brand
Earlier this month I facilitated a two-day marketing team offsite for a technology client that went public about a year and a half ago. The company is in the midst of building their 2016 marketing plan so the CMO wanted to bring together her large, geographically diverse leadership team in one location for team building and brand...

Maximizing Your Brand’s Word of Mouth Potential

Maximizing Your Brand’s Word of Mouth Potential
A few months ago, we went to hear Professor Jonah Berger talk about his book, Contagious. The book is a useful primer on how to make your product/service more likely to receive word of mouth (WOM) advocacy from your customers. Having spent time consulting for Procter & Gamble’s groundbreaking WOM group, Vocalpoint, we know the importance of...

Defining Your Competitive Set

At the core of every positioning statement is the reason a product/service/brand is different and better than its competitors. Because of this, how you choose to define your competitive set is a critical piece of developing a compelling positioning statement. Here’s a quick 3-minute video of how to strategically approach defining your own...

All Aboard! Sharing Positioning With Non-Marketers

All Aboard! Sharing Positioning With Non-Marketers
Whenever I teach a positioning class or kick off a positioning workshop, one of the first things I say is that positioning statements are generally internal-use-only documents. This is not because they contain secrets – any marketing communication you create will reflect your positioning. Rather, it’s because positioning statements...

Cage Match: Positioning v. Elevator Pitch

Cage Match: Positioning v. Elevator Pitch
A while back, we taught a workshop for the Accelerator participants at the University of Chicago’s Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship about positioning statements and marketing plans. In the attached video segment, you can see how we helped the entrepreneurs differentiate between positioning and an elevator pitch, and to understand when and...

Be Everything to Everybody

Be Everything to Everybody
One of the most memorable Saturday Night Live skits from my childhood was the commercial for the made up product Shimmer featuring Gilda Radnor and Dan Akroyd. Perhaps I can even trace my marketing beginnings to that long ago parody – it certainly stuck in my memory! The premise of the commercial was that NEW Shimmer could be used as both a...

[Podcast] How to Craft Your Company’s Positioning Statement

I was privileged to be a guest on a Vistage Executive Street podcast last week! In the podcast, I discussed market positioning with the program’s host, Srinivas Rao. We talked about practical steps companies can take to develop their positioning statement. We also talked about the parts of the positioning exercise that typically give our...

Positioning Process Overview

Last month I was preparing to conduct a positioning workshop for a client. The CFO sent me an email that said: “Is it possible to give me an example of what a positioning statement looks like? I think I understand the concept, but not sure how it looks or will be used…” It occurred to me that my response to him could be useful for...