Posted February 9th, 2010
Positioning Your New Internet Business
If you are in the process of creating an Internet business, the last thing that you want is someone adding to your list of decisions you need to make. However there is something that needs your attention during these early stages of business development.
Basically a marketing position describes your unique place in the market. The key word here is unique. What makes your enterprise different from your competitors? What features and benefits do you offer your target market that the other players don’t?
-Service – Nearly all businesses claim they have great service. If you can provide exceptional service compared to your competitors, your customers will remember you. I’ll never forget calling a sour handyman to try to get him to come to my home for an emergency on a weekend. He acted like he didn’t want my business and then told me it was going to be 0 for him just to show up, no thanks. I called roto-router who gave me tremendous service, a guarantee, and the bill was less than 0. I now use them for all my plumbing.
-Extraordinary Features and Appealing Benefits – Identify what it is that you stress in your business operations or with your products or services. Maybe you are a “full service” attorney or you specialize in cases just like theirs. Possibly you offer more size options of your apparel than any other online store.
-Price Point – Not everyone can offer the lowest prices and still make a profit. But you must be certain to convince your prospect that your products and services are worth whatever it is that you charge.
-Negative Features – People probably find some things at your competitors annoying. Maybe they feel that they have to wait too long to get an answer to their questions. If that’s a good angle for you, try not phrasing it as a special positive feature, but frame it as a negative that they don’t have to worry about with your business. For example, you might say, “You’ll never have to wait for an answer to your questions with us.”
-Authority – Many companies tout how long they’ve been in business. All of these things build trust in the mind of the consumer. What trust-building factors do you have that the competition does not?
-Etc. – Whatever you can think of that allows you to demonstrate that you are different from your competitors (in a good way, of course) is useful. That’s really all positioning is. Spend some time thinking through each phase of your business to see what you can point to in order to stand apart.
You will spend a great deal of time later developing your online business. You may even make subtle modifications to your positioning as you experiment and discover what is working for you and what isn’t. Immediately, though, you must start working on your positioning statements. They are too integral to your long term success to postpone.
Tags: internet business, marketing position, online business, positioning business, start business, start-up, web business
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