Saturday, May 19, 2012

The True Meaning of Beer - “Get Your Message Straight”

You have a position in the market place. A position you have either carefully crafted after much consideration or one that you’ve defaulted into unwittingly.

Let’s assume you have actually done the work; the soul searching of the SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats); the research and analysis of your competition – and, let me say that even if you’re developing a PERSONAL brand there is de-facto ‘competition’; the interviews with your customers, team and advisors. You’ve labored and examined every word in that 100 word statement and feel satisfied that you’ve found ‘it’ – a positioning statement of which you can be proud. A position you can support and in turn, can support you. Let’s not forget that positioning statements provide a solid foundation to guide our actions – to keep us on course. They give back ten-fold for all that hair-pulling and gnashing of teeth.

Now, what?

What do you do next? The reality is that you can’t ‘stick’ the positioning statement in your emails; you can’t ‘stand-up comedy’ it into your first 30 seconds after the initial ‘hello’. It doesn’t lend itself to billboards, radio, brochures, Facebook, or Twitter - not in that form, anyway. It’s like showing off the foundation of your house or the frame of a car. It’s critical to the structure and usefulness but it’s not sexy and frankly, people don’t want to see it. They just need to believe that it is in place and it is sound.

You break down the positioning into key points. If you’ve written a half-decent statement, you should find at least six to eight of them embedded in it. Pull them out, individually. Then think about for whose attention you’re vying. Are you trying to influence customers, venture capitalists, employees, the media, analysts, your kid’s school teacher or prospective employers? Determine the list and then, assuming you KNOW your audience (and, that’s its own topic of discussion), begin crafting messages to speak to those key points.

Let’s say you are a bar/restaurant and that a key point in your positioning is – beer. Who doesn’t like that? OK, so who is drinking this beer? And, why do they care about it? Well, if it is microbrew made on location we could say the following:

College Student: “Our beer is inexpensive and strong – you can get your date drunk for very little coin.”

Home Brewers: “Our micros are handcrafted, on location, with abracadabra yeast by an award winning brew master.”

Average Joe: “Enjoy supporting your home town culture while enjoying a variety of locally brewed, tasty beers.”

See, where I am going?

At the end of it all - it’s still BEER – but it can mean very different things to different people. You need to know how to speak to those you are trying to persuade; need to understand what will resonate with them and how to deliver the message. The core positioning is critical but it can only act as a springboard to reaching your constituents. Delivering compelling messages can leave your audience a little intoxicated and wanting more.

Jacqueline ‘Jack’ Perez is Founder and Market Builder for Summit Strategy Partners, LLC, a Chapel Hill-based boutique strategic marketing and communications firm. Jack helps companies align their marketing strategy to corporate objectives and uncover their Disruptive ConversationTM. She regularly publishes MarketingSmack – a weekly humorous blog on the Human Experience.