CREATING YOUR POSITION
CREATING YOUR POSITION
Thursday, 30 November 2006 10:36
Positioning is a huge part of Personal Branding. Your position is one of two "legs" your brand stands on; the other "leg" is your personality asserts Peter Montoya in this article that urges you to Market yourself as the perfect advisor for your "dream client".
Positioning is a huge part of Personal Branding. Your position is one of two "legs" your brand stands on; the other "leg" is your personality.Positioning Is EverywhereYou’ve been bombarded with positioning, and chances are you don’t even know it. You’ve sipped an "uncola," driven a car reflecting the "relentless pursuit of perfection," and used a computer for creative rebels who want to think differently.Companies seek to market their products at a consumer niche.
They recognize your niche; they want to appeal to your desires. In fact, if you visit the Yahoo!(r) search engine, type in the words "designed with you in mind," and search for results, you get 52 pages of results - web sites promoting child-rearing, churches, checkbooks with eccentric designs, and degree mills.Push Your ProductAnd though positioning might seem about products, it also works for Personal Brands. After all, you are selling a product, and that product is YOU. Like every other product on the market, you compete with others - namely, other professionals in your field. You are also competing with a tide of indifference - the consumer notion your prospect harbors that says, "I don’t need to start one more relationship."Because positioning is so critical for success, you should consider it fundamental to your Personal Branding. After all, your services are intended for a particular domain, and your prospects must feel like you are "the answer" in their domain.
Understand that the car you drive, the clothes you wear, and the way your office looks do NOT position you. Your Personal Branding and Personal Marketing do. You have to start using Personal Branding and Personal Marketing to attract the clients you want to attract.Building Your Brand on a PositionYour positioning is determined with an eye on your competitors. Find out what services they offer, and how they attract prospects and clients. Then, make a list of the things that are most notable and unique to you - your interests, personal history, personality, experience and knowledge. These are foundational elements of your Personal Brand. With that foundation in mind, look at your domain’s careers, interests, likes, and dislikes.Ask yourself what factors impact your domain’s buying decisions. Are members of your domain concerned about cost? Quality? Reputation? Convenience? Experience? Better yet, ask those who exemplify your "dream clients" what they want. You need to discover what motivates your prospects to contact you, and/or why they don’t. With some observation, you can quickly discover a lot of information about your domain, and put it to work.
Case StudyA former NFL defensive lineman seeks a new career as a sports agent. He’s met the accreditation criteria of the NFL Players Association, but so far, his prospecting has been nil. However, he has a great potential position, and he decides to capitalize on it. He writes a positioning statement - an internal roadmap for his Personal Branding and Personal Marketing efforts, no more than 20 or 30 words. It sums up his strengths: "The veteran defensive end who uses his field-level knowledge of the NFL to see the big picture of a lineman’s career and negotiate deals for long-term security." He expresses this position in a Personal Brochure, in direct mail and e-mail to draft choices, training camps, and coaches and directors of player personnel. Coaches and players start calling him because - as his marketing notes - "I see things from your stance."
If you’ve done your homework, you should have a strong, valid position. But there’s only one way to test it, and that’s to use it as the basis for your Personal Brand. Build your slogan around it. Use it to inspire graphics and copy for your Personal Brochure or Personal Website. Use it as a basis for direct mail messages to emphasize your value to your domain. Put your position into the marketplace consistently and effectively, and see how people react to it.The Schwab StoryOne man built his Personal Brand around a position - and into a financial empire. Charles Schwab rose to the top by positioning his eponymously named company as "the discount brokerage." Everyone knew that when you invested through Charles Schwab & Co., you wouldn’t get gouged by high commissions, or sold stocks you didn’t want. Today, Schwab’s low-cost, user-friendly brokerage serves more than 5.9 million investors and controls more than $542 billion in assets. It "owns" the discount brokerage position. What position do you want to own?
Published with permission from Peter Montoya Inc.
Peter Montoya is president of Peter Montoya Inc., the world’s only Personal Branding agency. For information on Personal Branding Magazine or his acclaimed book, The Personal Branding Phenomenon please visit www.petermontoya.com or call (866) 288-9300.
