Content marketing takes your audience on a journey that starts with acknowledging a need and ends with a sale and when done right, that sale is yours, but if you’ve ever had to make up a story on the fly to satisfy a six-year old, you know how hard it can be when you’re not prepared.
A marketing positioning statement is like preparing for the story of your product or service. While it may seem like an unnecessary step, it’s absolutely critical for maintaining clear, consistent and effective messaging across your platforms, mediums and channels. So let’s take a closer look at how a good positioning statement will improve your content marketing.
The Positioning Statement
Positioning statements are for internal use only, used to align your team around a single vision. And it’s quite simple but also powerful, especially when managing remote teams and freelancers. To start your positioning statement you simply identify;
- Your target market
- Alternatives to your offering, in a general sense
- Definition of your product or service
- Key problem-solving capability/differentiator
- Specific alternatives
For example, let’s say you’re launching a new disposable diaper. Your positioning statement might look something like this;
For environmentally conscious mothers with children in diapers who are dissatisfied with reusable diaper options that are messy and gross; Dia Diapers are biodegradable disposable diapers that deliverthe convenience and sanitation of disposable diapers without excessive waste unlike traditional reusable diapers.
Not simple enough for you? Cornell University has a positioning statement tool that will spit one out in seconds.
Putting It Into Action
The average person must be exposed to a message seven times before it sinks in, so if you’re selling a product or service, it’s important that the same target audience hears the same message every time or the message is wasted. Therein lies the power of a positioning statement. It helps keep your content marketing focused and reinforces a single message.
So why do you care?
When one persona, say Karin, a mom who currently uses cloth diapers sees a Dia Diapers YouTube video, she’s left with the same message as Susan, another persona who recycles but doesn’t like reusable diapers and reads a whitepaper on the environmental impact of disposable diapers. That message should be that Dia Diapers are environmentally-friendly diapers without the mess of reusable alternatives.
Both personas require different information in each piece of content to help them make the decision to purchase Dia Diapers. But because the positioning statement clearly laid out the who, the what and the why, both Karin and Susan are left with the same conclusion; that Dia Diapers might be just right for what they want out of a diaper and worth trying.
That’s good content marketing.
With a positioning statement and key messages, your content marketing is clearer to understand making your audience more likely to trust your message and company more, helping you meet your revenue goals. And that’s good business.
April is a marketing consultant who has been helping small and medium sized companies develop and execute cross-channel marketing strategies for more than five years. April’s work with sales and marketing started with integrating innovating marketing strategies into existing Fortune 500 B2B sales teams’ activities in order to improve revenue. April has since developed a passion for new technology and digital media that has led her to work with start-ups in building, managing and growing their influence and tie marketing into sales, experiences she writes about on several blogs. With a strong strategic mindset and wide marketing experience, April now helps clients which range from established leaders in manufacturing looking to defend their market share, to e-commerce companies expanding their digital product line. April graduated from IE Business School in Madrid Spain with an International MBA prior to striking out on her own as a freelancer. She is an active runner and resides in Atlanta.
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