Positioning explained
What is positioning, and how is it different from messaging?
Most can grasp the concept of messaging fairly easily: being deliberate about the words we should use to make someone think, feel, or do what we want them to.
But in business, our target customers and their problems don’t exist in a vacuum, and hiring you is not their only option.
They can hire a competitor.
They can do it themselves.
They can seek an ‘indirect alternative’ (e.g., using software instead of a service).
Or, they can simply not solve the problem at all.
The external environment is vast, and it’s not enough to simply convince someone that you can do the job they need done. You have to persuade them that you can do the job better than all their available alternatives.
You need to consider the competitive landscape, the tools on the market, and the general awareness of their problem and your craft.
This is positioning. It’s the link between your business strategy and your messaging.
You have to position yourself favourably in the minds of a well-defined set of customers.
And while this realization adds quite a bit of depth to the work required to hone your messaging, it will also help you validate and grow your business.
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Here’s How Positioning Shaped My Early Career in Marketing
Copywriter
I started as a copywriter with zero marketing experience. I couldn’t position myself around the quality of my past work because there was none. Instead, “copywriter” just became the category of what I did, and my differentiator was that I had a long career in technology.
I was the copywriter who could interview technical people. “The geek whisperer.” This is the identity that occupied the very small amount of space I was granted in the minds of some early customers, and it was enough to secure me some critical gigs early on.
Positioning & Messaging Consultant
My shift from “copywriter” to “positioning & messaging consultant” is a good example of adapting to changes in both the internal and external domains.
Internally, I found that I was way more interested in the messaging strategies underlying great copy than in the writing itself. I was learning about concepts like ideal buyer personas and StoryBrand workshops, and I wanted to be involved in strategy. I was good at conducting interviews, so maybe, I thought, I would be good at leading workshops.
Plus, I was earning an MBA, which lent me perceived authority as someone worth consulting with.
Externally, copywriters were becoming commoditized. The pandemic led to a surge in digital freelancing as a flood of disenfranchised or laid-off knowledge workers sought to go out on their own. Freelance copywriting, as an aspiration, blew up. If LinkedIn or Upwork were physical spaces, you wouldn’t be able to kick a pebble without hitting a copywriter.
Fractional CMO
Ironically, there are flaws in my positioning as a positioning guy. My target customers are not marketers, and positioning is a marketing term. It’s jargon.
I’ve had entrepreneurs come to us looking for positioning, but not enough to say it’s a term that resonates with our target audience of skilled service providers.
Plus, most of our clients aren’t looking for a team of specialized marketing consultants; they need someone who can get a marketing campaign across the finish line, from strategy through execution and reporting.
People generally understand what a CMO is: someone in charge of marketing. In this role, I manage teams of skilled marketers (our partners) and serve clients in a fractional capacity, keeping things flexible and affordable all around.
Marketing Consultancy
As for the company itself, we phased out ‘agency’ and started calling Sarris Marketing a ‘consultancy.’
This framing suggests a higher-touch engagement with a trusted authority (the consultant) and allows us to charge a premium (though we’re still more affordable than many larger agencies that charge $20,000+ for a website). That premium leaves room for us to outsource work to our agency partners, which aligns with the fractional CMO model.
Furthermore, when we propose a significant amount of strategic work at the outset of a project, it aligns more closely with customer expectations.
These positioning shifts were the result of doing, learning, discussing, and adjusting. Feedback loops and continuous improvement.
If you need help organizing what you’ve learned into a clear marketing strategy — with sharper messaging that actually wins you business — let’s talk.
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