Do you understand the position that you own in your market? This is what makes people think of you and what they associate you with. Of course, it's unreasonable to expect everyone in your market to be familiar with you, but it is a good idea to make sure that the general perception of your target prospects is in line with what you actually have to offer and what you do.
Al Reis and Jack Trout wrote one of the most impactful marketing books in history, "Positioning: The Battle for the Mind." They say that the purpose of positioning is to not to, "…create something new and different, but to manipulate what's already in the mind, to retie the connections that already exist." Therefore, it is reasonable to claim that your market position may be recrafted.
Let's say for instance that you are an attorney who loves estate planning and wants to concentrate your practice on it, but the market's perception is that you handle residential real estate. This is probably due to a significant amount of work you've done in that area and/or a relationship with referral sources that send this business your way.
The good news is that people recognize you as a lawyer. The bad news is that their perception is not what you want; so that serves as an obstacle to incoming estate planning work.
You can recraft your prospects' perception of the kind of law you practice through your marketing. You can reposition yourself and form a revised brand that reshapes the public's perception of you. To do this you will have to answer three basic questions:
- Who are your target clients?
- What will they get from your estate planning services?
- Why are you uniquely qualified to handle this for them?
Defining who, what and why provides the groundwork necessary to determine the differentiators that make you unique and desirable. They also provide a baseline from which you can establish the value-added advantages that can tip the scales in your favor when a prospect compares you against a competitor.
When you use your positioning work to craft new marketing messages, you will have the advantage of speaking to precisely the right target audience about something that interests them, and they will understand why they should call you. The messages will be so on-target that you will effectively re-position and rebrand yourself.
by: Christine Pilch
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