Positioning: being the obvious choice for someone specific

Amara Who is my customer? Honestly, anyone who needs what I do.

Nadia That is the answer struggling businesses give, and it is the single most expensive sentence in marketing.

Amara But it is true. I can help almost anyone.

Nadia You can. That is a fact about your capability, not a strategy for being chosen. Broad positioning feels safe because it excludes nobody, and in practice it excludes everybody, because no individual reading it recognises themselves.

Amara Surely narrowing means fewer customers?

Nadia It means fewer competitors. Which is a completely different thing, and it is the whole point. You are not shrinking the market, you are shrinking the number of people the customer is comparing you against.

Amara Give me the test.

Nadia Could a competitor put their name on your positioning statement and have it still be true? If yes, you have described your category rather than your position.

Amara That is uncomfortable. Mine would pass that test easily.

Nadia Most do. So let us fix it. Four parts, one sentence. For whom. In what situation. What you do. And why you rather than the obvious alternative.

Amara Show me a bad one and a good one.

Nadia Bad: we provide high quality training solutions for businesses. Every single word could belong to a thousand companies.

Amara And good?

Nadia For care homes in the North West that fail on training evidence at inspection, we build the induction record the regulator actually asks for, in two weeks, using your own policies rather than generic content.

Amara That is much longer.

Nadia And somebody either recognises themselves in it or they do not, and both of those are useful. The short one gets a polite nod and no phone call.

Amara You mentioned the situation. Why does that matter so much?

Nadia Because nobody wakes up wanting a service. They hit a moment. A failed inspection. Someone resigning. A letter from a regulator. A price rise from their current supplier.

Amara The trigger.

Nadia The trigger. And marketing that describes the trigger beats marketing that describes the product, every time, because the trigger is what the person is actually thinking about at two in the morning.

Amara Is there a practical benefit to that beyond the message?

Nadia A large one. Trigger language and search language are usually the same words. People type their problem into a search engine, not your product category. So the sentence that describes their moment is also the sentence that gets found.

Amara Last thing. I keep being told to sell benefits not features.

Nadia Half right, and the missing third is where most marketing fails. A feature is what it is. A benefit is what it does for them. And a reason to believe is why they should accept that the benefit is real.

Amara Example.

Nadia Feature: all fifteen standards with a verifiable certificate. Benefit: you can prove your induction at inspection. Reason to believe: every certificate carries a code your inspector can check on our site in ten seconds.

Amara Without the third one it is just a claim.

Nadia And everybody makes the same claims, which is why benefits alone read as noise. The reason to believe is the part your competitor cannot copy in an afternoon.