Real Alternatives
What buyers actually compare you against, including inaction.
Brand Positioning
Brand Positioning That Names Who You Are Deliberately Not For
A position that appeals to everyone is not a position. Brand positioning decides where you sit relative to the alternatives a buyer is actually considering — including doing nothing — and what you are giving up in order to be clearly better at something. The exclusions are what make it real.
We Push for the Trade-Off
Positioning work that ends without a sacrifice has not finished.
A Stated Trade-Off
What you are worse at, deliberately.
Evidence Required
A claim you cannot support is a slogan.
Testable
Whether the market recognises it, not whether the room liked it.
Feeds Everything Else
Messaging, naming and design follow from it.
Positioning, Explained
What Does Positioning Decide?
Four things, and the last is the one usually avoided.
Discuss Your Position →- 1
Who It Is For
Specifically enough to exclude people.
- 2
What It Replaces
The alternative, which may be a spreadsheet or nothing.
- 3
Why It Is Better
For that buyer, in a way that can be substantiated.
- 4
What You Give Up
The trade-off. Without one, there is no position.
What Positioning Work Covers
Research, the decision, and the words that carry it.
Broader strategy work is covered by brand strategy.
How We Develop Positioning
Find what customers already say, then decide what to give up.
Ask Customers
Why they chose you, in their own words.
Map the Alternatives
Including doing nothing, which is the most common one.
Find the Gap
What is unclaimed and defensible.
Name the Trade-Off
What you are deliberately worse at.
Test It
Whether the market recognises the distinction.
Trade-offs
Why a Position Without a Sacrifice Is Not One
If you are better at everything for everyone, you have described an ambition rather than a position.
What does the trade-off do?
It makes the claim believable. A product that is faster, cheaper, more powerful and easier than every alternative is not credible, and buyers discount all four claims together.
A product that is deliberately simpler, and worse for people who need depth, is credible — and the people who want simple now have a reason to choose it.
It also gives the organisation a decision rule. Every future feature request can be answered against what was given up.
Why ask customers first?
Because the position frequently already exists in how they describe you, and it is rarely how you describe yourself.
Internal positioning work produces language everyone in the company recognises. Customer language is what other buyers will recognise, and they are different vocabularies.
A dozen conversations asking why they chose you and what they nearly chose instead usually produces the position more directly than a workshop does.
Questions,answered.
Brand positioning establishes who you are for, what alternative you replace, why you are better for that buyer, and what you deliberately give up in exchange.
Brand strategy is broader. Positioning is the specific decision about where you sit relative to alternatives, which the rest of the strategy follows from.
Yes, or the claim is not credible. A product better than everything for everyone is discounted entirely; one that is deliberately worse at something is believable about what it is good at.
Customer conversations more than workshops. The position usually already exists in how customers describe you, in vocabulary that differs from how you describe yourself.
When the market recognises the distinction and sales conversations get shorter because the wrong-fit prospects have self-selected out earlier.
Still deciding if brand positioning is right for you?
Talk to UsBetter at Everything, for Everyone
Positioning workshops converge on a statement everyone can agree with, which means one that excludes nobody and gives up nothing. Faster, better, more flexible, more affordable, easier to use.
It is agreeable precisely because it costs nothing, and it is discounted by buyers for the same reason. Four superlatives together are less believable than one, because nothing is best at everything.
The useful version of the exercise ends with somebody uncomfortable — because a real position names a group you are letting go of, and that is the part organisations negotiate their way out of.
Free Positioning Conversation
Talk Through Where You Actually Sit
Tell us who buys from you and what they nearly chose instead. We will work through the position and the trade-off it requires.
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