Program 224 – Grappling with Product Positioning

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Starting the conversation…

We know there is a need, we build a product to that need, yet there isn’t immediate traction.

How much of marketing is experimentation to close the gap between customer expectation and a product’s promise?

Host: Jess Dewell
Co-host: Laura Pence Atencio

What You Will Hear:

Marketing is a business experiment.

Stubborn gets in the way, you must shift your perspective.

Need and want are different, yet you confuse the two attempting to be creative.

You know there is a need, but your solution may be ill positioned.

Humanness wins every time.

Money is not the issue.

Check your assumptions around excuses and reasons.

Your biggest competitor is inaction.

Your priorities can change over  time.

Everything is a series of decisions.

There are  many right answers.

Just go, even though you don’t have all the answers.

Assess the capacity of your resources for product positioning and make the best choice with your constraints.

It is BOLD to make marketing an ongoing experiment.

Notable and Quotable:

Laura Pence Atencio 2:15
It’s absolutely true. There are systems and processes that you can follow to give yourself a great chance of success from the beginning. But until you put your baby out live into the world, you don’t know if it’s going to walk, you don’t know. And so what you do is see what worked, what resonated, and what took hold. And then tweak the other parts. And then once you figure that out, there’s always something to change or tweak to make it better. It’s kind of like your website. It’s just never finished.

Jess Dewell 2:51
I don’t have to get it right the first time, because it’s always changing.

Laura Pence Atencio 2:56
If you fail, you just found one way it doesn’t work, and you continue on with you’re learning.

Laura Pence Atencio 3:00
I’m not saying that you should let the world dictate to you who you are, what you should do. But if somebody that is looking at you sees exactly who you are before you do, perhaps you might want to pay attention to that.

Jess Dewell 5:18
People think “Oh, I’ll just put it on social media and it will work.” Large companies say this.” I’ll just put it on social media and it will work.” Well sure. If there’s a community. Sure, if there’s a following. Sure, if those things. All of those things are never instantaneous.

Jess Dewell 6:05
And I know a lot of people these days that are small to medium enterprises. They don’t want to talk about being competitive, which is kind of an interesting dichotomy. Because when you get business, somebody else doesn’t. When you don’t get business, somebody else gets that business. So yes, there may be enough for everybody to have what they want. If somebody else is taking what you consider to be that ideal client, you’re not serving yourself by not looking at the competitive advantage.

Laura Pence Atencio 6:54
Peers and competitors really are the same thing. It just matters., do you get along with them or not? If you don’t get along with them, their competitio. If you get along with them, their peers.

Laura Pence Atencio 7:09
If I’m competing for the same ideal client with another person, ultimately it’s up to that client to decide which person they’re going to work with — which one resonates the most. But in order to give them the chance to decide on you, you have to put yourself out ther. And you have to speak in the language that is going to make them pay attention and say, “Oh, you get me. You see me, you understand me. Yes, I want you.” Because you could be offering exactly the same thing. That’s where the positioning comes in.

Laura Pence Atencio 8:44
With small businesses, the more you can show the individual “I see you, I hear you ,I get you, and I care,” then it makes a differenc. And you could charge a lot more. If somebody’s on board and they just love you, and they’re like, “Yes, yes, you’re my person,” then you can charge whatever the market will pay out.

Laura Pence Atencio 9:10
When people say the problem is time or money, they’re just not committed.

Jess Dewell 9:17
Money is not the issue, really not to the people who see the value, and want that value, and it fits into their role and responsibilities and helps them achieve what they want to achieve. That comes down to what’s between our ears.

Laura Pence Atencio 10:16
There was never a good tim. Life is always throwing things at you.

Jess Dewell 10:50
I don’t call people on their excuses because my perspective on what is an excuse or not maybe different for them to me.

Jess Dewell 11:06
There’s no good time to start a diet. There’s no good time to go to that new networking thing. You just have to decide to do it, and make a priority.

Jess Dewell 11:50
Positioning requires that we make choices and choices are something that people don’t like to make.

Laura Pence Atencio 11:55
The biggest competition is not your physical competitor, its inaction.

Laura Pence Atencio 12:21
Most of the time in product positioning, it’s not competing with another person who does what you do. What you’re competing with is your ideal client choosing not to take action.

Laura Pence Atencio 14:19
Very rarely does the the opportunity only come around one time, and now it could be that specific opportunity. But God or the universe doesn’t operate and you get one shot and then you’re out. That’s not the way it works. If you miss that opportunity, find something similar.

Laura Pence Atencio 21:11
A lot of people want to do whatever is trendy, or whatever is flashy. Or they want to pivot all the time and they’re like, “Oh, shiny object” squirrel. Because I do systems and processes, and back-in tools for marketing systems, I check out tools all the time. But that’s part of my job, not part of your job. You shouldn’t be doing it. Ask someone whose job it is to tell you which ones to use. Okay?

Laura Pence Atencio 21:28
There are many different ways that you could approach a business, or product, or launch. It comes down to, “Who are you? What is your personality? What can you actually sustain?” and what will resonate with your audience. And if your audience, and your personality don’t match, then you’re doing it wrong.

Jess Dewell 24:36
Every human wants stability. In some level. Stability could mean drastically different things to “I want a nest,” to I expect the sun to come up tomorrow.

Laura Pence Atencio 27:42
If somebody has what they feel like divine inspiration or call from the universe, and they have to do the thing, They’re going to do this thing. And it’s going to work, or it’s not. And that’s the thing where you have to decide, “are you all in on it? And you’re going to do whatever it takes and you’re going to figure out how to make it work? which can happen, but if you were mistaken, and it’s not going to work, then you have to set a date by which it will work or you’re going to change tactics.

Jess Dewell 28:08
If you have to prove it, I have to prove it, the next person has to prove, it the next person has to prove. It is has to be proven longer than it took to discover it in the first place. And in the world of digital technology, sometimes that’s too long. So that’s where that window of opportunity is. Don’t take too long to change and adapt, especially when it comes to positioning, because there is a point of diminishing return that we must stay in front of.

Laura Pence Atencio 30:55
Everything you do, you’re either going to do unsure or flat scared. You just got to go. Because if you wait to have all the answers, you’re going to miss the window.

Laura Pence Atencio 35:40
What you want to know is your break even point. That’s the most important thing. Because if you lose money, that’s bad. If you break even, you can continue experimenting. If you make money, fantastic! But you’ve got to figure out your break even point. That’s the key piece of data.

Laura Pence Atencio 37:28
Marketing often doesn’t mean your physical competitors. It could be your keyword competitors.

Laura Pence Atencio 37:54
If you’re losing money if you’re bleeding, you got to stop it. But you could set thresholds for, “if this happens, we’re going to do that.” Set your budgets. Set your parameters. But 90 days is a good amount of time for an overall view of what’s going on.

Laura Pence Atencio 44:52
Marketing is never something that you should ignore. You can create predictable sustainable income and figure out how to keep your profits high, if you pay attention to marketing.

Resources:

Tags:

process, culture, perspective, priorities, awareness, focus, decision making, problem solving, product positioning

How much of marketing is experimentation to close the gap between customer expectation and a product’s promise?

You can position your product for success today, and ensure its relevance tomorrow. We like to make marketing complicated, yet it doesn’t have to be. What if marketing is just an ongoing experiment? Jess Dewell talks with Laura Pence Atencio, International Marketing Consultant and Trainer, about grappling with product positioning.

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