Positioning is one of the essentials of B2B marketing but it’s very rare to see it done well. It’s a simple idea: as a marketer, you should explicitly manage the place your brand holds in the minds of your target audience so that it’s clearly differentiated from the competition.

The concept gained currency in a series of Ad Age articles in the ’70s by Al Ries and Jack Trout and has kept its place in the marketing lexicon ever since — a sign that there’s something real going on.

A clear, compelling positioning statement is a kind of touchstone for all of your marketing efforts. If everyone in the company knows what you stand for, it’s a lot easier to judge whether a given tactic, headline or video is on-strategy.

We’ve adapted some ideas about positioning from the 1980s work of Bengt Anderson and Steve Trygg, two talented B2B marketers from Sweden, and over time, made them our own. We still use their simple, three-point test that says a positioning has to be:

Relevant –It has to speak to a real need at the front of the prospect’s mind.

Available – No other competitor can ‘own’ the positioning.

Attainable –It has to be credible; you have to be able to deliver on it (and prove you can).

A good positioning passes all three tests. Two out of three is not good enough.  Some examples that fail:

“Cures the common cold” – relevant, yes; available, yes; attainable… no.

“The only purple blade server on the market” – available and attainable… but irrelevant.

“The safe car company” –  relevant and attainable, but not really available (Volvo built a brand on it and many others chase safety now, too).

And a few examples that have succeeded so well, we don’t even have to tell you who they are:

“CRM without software”

“The computer for the rest of us”

“The open source operating system”

The fact that we struggled to come up with even these three tells you how rare it is for tech companies to create and sustain a clear, compelling positioning.

Sometimes, a positioning can be summed up in a strapline. More often, it takes a bit more than that — and might only have meaning for the target audience (not a bad thing).  Here’s a few we prepared earlier:

ip.access is the ‘mobile over IP’ company.
They take mobile network traffic and route it over broadband to cut costs and improve network coverage and capacity.

VNL is the microtelecom pioneer.
They’ve re-engineered GSM networks specifically for remote rural communities (just as microfinance did for banking).

Psion Teklogix helps companies maximise their Return on Mobility™.
Their rugged mobile computers increase productivity while driving down costs.

We think these ideas pass the triple test for these companies: they’re relevant, available and attainable.  And by driving them into the marketplace over and over again, we’re helping carve out a sustainable positioning that, in a world of me-too marketing, is a real competitive advantage.

How clear is your company’s positioning? Can you get it on to a T-shirt?

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2009. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B content marketing, B2B corporate positioning, B2B marketing, B2B message development, B2B technology marketing, Content, Copywriting, positioning, Thought Leadership, Web Marketing

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We all could learn a lot from beauty companies like L’Oreal, which uses naming to great, if insidious, effect. There can only be a few women of a certain age on the planet, for example, who haven’t heard of Boswelox, Pentapeptides or Nutrillium. (All, I think, purport to firm the skin and make it glow – which is real important of course if you’re Andi McDowell).

Ridiculous as the science  underpinning these products may be (that’s not for me to judge), the bottom line is that product or feature naming in the hugely competitive cosmetics industry really does work.  Millions of women (and, increasingly, similar numbers of men) are persuaded by the pseudo-science to buy pots and pots of gloop, simply because naming like this gives a reason to believe that it can really protect the skin, hair, eyes, lips or whatever from aging.

What does this mean for B2B? Well, pseudo-science is probably not the right route to take, because purchasing in B2B is essentially a completely rational process where scores of technical experts in big purchasing companies evaluate and then re-evaluate vendor claims. But that doesn’t mean B2B marketers shouldn’t put effort into proper, accurate naming.

There are three reasons that spring to mind as to why it’s important.

First,  naming things says they’re unique to you and it’s a good way of identifying the advantages and benefits you deliver to customers, the things that differentiate you from the competition.

Second, clear names make you stand out from the generic descriptions that pollute B2B tech and which are partly responsible for ever more (and incredible) claim inflation..

Finally, if you get naming right, it can make a real difference to SEO performance: particularly if you can capture terms that resonate in the market.

Interestingly we’ve just gone through an intensive process of positioning and messaging for one of our newest clients, Secerno, where naming was central.

Based in Oxford, Secerno has some wonderful, patent-protected technology for creating intelligent perimeters around enterprise databases to prevent unauthorized activities by outside attackers, as well as trusted insiders. (It’s a hot, hot company and if you’re a large enterprise that has vulnerable data, you should check it out at www.secerno.com)

As with a lot of our clients, the process has led to the creation of a completely new naming architecture covering what the company does, how it does it and the benefits it delivers.

What Secerno has taught us, though, is that while naming things is important, it’s really just the start.

We’re working with a really smart client on this one, the company’s marketing director, Emma Dunstone.  She believes in the new naming and she understands that for it to live and, more importantly, become part of Secerno’s DNA, it’s simply not good enough to have it just written down in brochures and on the website. You have to believe in it. You have to breathe it.

BTW (and as a concluding comment on naming), I recommend e3p skin protection spray from Clarins. You’ll get the benefit of its Magnetic Defence Complex which protects your skin from the ageing effects of Artificial Electromagnetic Waves. Looking at the pictures to the right of this post, I’d say that’s pretty vital.

© stan@velocitypartners.co.uk for Velocity Partners, 2008. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B marketing, positioning, Technology Marketing

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