Why you need to position your agency or freelance business. What kind of first impression are you making with potential clients?

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Clinton Fletcher
5 years ago
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1 The Agency Positioning Kit Without a clear reason to choose you, your leads will usually default to the lowest-priced competitor. In other words, if you don t stand out you might as well stand down. But fear not this kit has your back. Ready to get positioning? Why you need to position your agency or freelance business What kind of first impression are you making with potential clients? Have you ever really thought about it? What does your website say? What do you say in that first cold call? What about in a sales meeting? How can you stand out? The Killer Cs that all web companies face Competition, Commoditization and Clowns Will they wreck your business, or will you stomp on them like Godzilla crushing Mothra? Most importantly, how can you grow if you don t know who you are? That s what positioning your company is all about going through a process of first introspection, then definition, to get at the core of who you want to be as a business. That might sound like a tall order, but it s not Especially now that you ve got this kit. I m not going lie to you this kit is going to ask you to do a lot of work. You ll answer what will feel like a million questions, and then you ll answer just a couple more. But at the end you ll have a positioning statement two or three sentences that solidly define your business in your mind. Big deal, right? Except you ll then be able to take what you ve learned about yourself and your company and filter all of your marketing activities through it. Your positioning statement will make it all possible. The result? A better knowledge of who you actually are, and marketing that maybe for the first time in the history of your company reflects your true value.

2 Strategies to help your positioning All the pretty positioning statements in the world won t help you if you re commoditized from the start. You need to be different in the eyes of your clients, and think and act accordingly. That can be tough. You might not be ready to grow. But grow you must, little sunflower. Grow you must, until you re an 8-foot behemoth and you tower above the weak-ass azaleas the farmer s wife planted in the back garden. The point is, you need to think and act differently about some things. Here are three you might consider. Niche down. No less than Virgin Entrepreneur says niching down is great, because customers are often willing to pay extra for highly specialized products and services. I concur; having a niche web agencies has helped me greatly. (Sound of cash register.) How should you choose your niche? Tons of info online, but the SBA suggests this concise summary: ask yourself in which areas your competitors are already well-established, which areas are being ignored, and where the potential opportunities lie. Your niche might be geographical. For instance, you may decide to focus on offering services exclusively to businesses in Bozeman, Montana. (Yee-ha.) Or you may niche down on the services you provide end-to-end design and marketing, for example, or nothing but PPC ads. Finally, you might niche down on a particular kind of client, like alternative health providers or government agencies. (Big spread there, but you get the point.) Stand for something strategic, not tactical Be the person who grows businesses, not the one who creates brochures. Market the end result your clients will achieve I used to tell people I offered writing, editing and content marketing services. Now I say I help businesses get found, build trust and drive more sales. I still do the same things; I just describe them in ways that have much more appeal to the people I market to.

3 After all, if you asked a prospect if they wanted to talk about you building them a new website, they might say no. But if you asked them if they d be interested in talking about how they could double or triple the number of leads they re currently getting Well suddenly you d have a very interested prospect, I d wager. The positioning statement your secret weapon A positioning statement is a to-the-point description of your business, your clients and how you help them. Now before you charge in to writing one, let s get clear. A positioning statement is not a tagline, or an elevator pitch. It s meant for you and you alone clients shouldn t see it. But it s more important than anything else you do, because it informs everything else you actually do show to clients. Every decision you make about your services, prices, marketing materials, and customer service should align with and support your positioning statement. And now we re going to write one! 5 things to keep in mind when you re writing a positioning statement 1. Get super-specific about what you do in a way that demonstrates value to your clients. For example, you don t build websites, you help businesses grow online. 2. Really get to know your clients, and know how you help them. Refer to the worksheets that came with this package for insight. 3. Don t bullshit. Think of clients like that kid in the Sixth Sense: they see dead people. Note: by dead people here, I mean bullshitters. 4. Zero in on the benefits, not the features, of what you offer. For more, read this. 5. Let your freak flag fly. In other words, be yourself. Authenticity may not close sales, but its opposite sure can lose them. What makes a good positioning statement? Doug Stayman, on the Cornell University blog, writes: 1. It is simple, memorable, and tailored to the target market. 2. It provides an unmistakable and easily understood picture of your brand that differentiates it from your competitors. 3. It is credible, and your brand can deliver on its promise.

4 4. Your brand can be the sole occupier of this particular position in the market. You can own it. 5. It helps you evaluate whether or not marketing decisions are consistent with and supportive of your brand. 6. It leaves room for growth. How to write a positioning statement, step one This kit came with several worksheets that I use with my own clients. If you haven t done them already, do 01 to 06 now. They ll help you dive deep into your business, even though while you re doing them you might feel like you re not diving, but drowning. But I guarantee if you do the work while you re down at the bottom, you ll come back up to the surface with a pearl or two. How to write a positioning statement, step two Good news You re now only a few blanks away from your very own positioning statement. That s right. Here s a fill-in-the-blanks version you can use to get started: [Your company] [provides/delivers/helps/offers/works with etc.] [your ideal client] to [benefits-focused outcome of your services]. We do this by [things you do that demonstrate you re not bullshitting]. Here s how that looks in real life, using what I myself do as an example: I help web agencies and freelance web professionals grow their businesses by improving the effectiveness of their own marketing; showing them how they can hire me to do the same for their clients; and then providing those services in a way that makes everybody money. Simple, huh? Here s a web design example:

5 RandomWeb works with $2 to $5M manufacturing companies to help them increase market-share and dominate the competition. We do this by providing digital marketing services that attract more leads, and building websites that help close more sales. Easy-peasy. Now try your own on the Positioning Statement Template in this kit. Then practice it a couple more times. Talk it over with your team, some colleagues, or some peers whose opinion you trust. Some questions to ask as you re kicking your positioning statement around: Is this really us? Is it true? Can we prove it do we have things like testimonials, case studies or LinkedIn recommendations to back up our claims? If not, can we get some? (And if you re just starting out, can you at least make sure the language on your website reflects your positioning, so a buyer won t read it and say These guys are full of it?) As the business gets bigger, could our positioning statement grow with us? Ask those questions, and work it until it feels good until you ve settled on the one that s most you. Presto! Welcome to your newly positioned agency. I hope you like what you see. Sending you on your merry way Where do you go from here? Out into the real world, to do the hard but rewarding work of rebranding your business based on your positioning statement. (Whaaaaaaaat? He can t be serious!) It sounds impossible, but it s in fact highly achievable. Just take things one step at a time. Start with your website tagline. Knowing what you now know about how you want to position yourself, does it hold up? How about your website copy? Your sales pitch?

6 By systematically working through everything that touches your client holding it up to the light shining from your fabulous new positioning statement you ll see where your marketing is letting you down And you can fix it safe in the knowledge that it will resonate with who you want to be as a company. Interested in learning more? I m currently gauging interest in a course to show you how to rock that next step how to use a positioning statement as a guide and rework all of your marketing so that everything tastes nice together like The World s Greatest Marketing Sandwich. At the end of the course you d have everything you needed to turn your website into a lean, mean hyper-aligned machine. Would you be interested in something like that? There s no course yet, but I d love to know what you think. Let me know at aaron@wrixon.com Thanks for reading, AW

DEVELOP THE COMPONENTS OF YOUR PERSONAL BRAND THAT DETERMINE HOW YOU WILL BE KNOWN IN YOUR MARKET

MODULE LESSON DEVELOP THE COMPONENTS OF YOUR PERSONAL BRAND THAT DETERMINE HOW YOU WILL BE KNOWN IN YOUR MARKET THE GUY YOU CALL WH EN YOU RE TIRED OF THINKING SM A LL DEVELOP A TAGLINE THAT SAYS SOMETHING