If Your Brand is for Everybody, Your Brand is for Nobody

I’ve spotted an odd trend recently, where positioning professionals have done a complete 180 on the value of niching. 

For years, their mantra has been “niche down” as a shortcut to market clarity. 

Now, all of a sudden, some are now claiming this advice was wrong and are publicly seeking forgiveness… whilst seemingly pitching their course-correction as evidence they are experts.

See, they are so convinced that what they sold you was wrong, they now want to charge you to fix it.

So whilst it’s seemingly de rigueur to reject the niche, it’s not at all obvious these course-correctors even understand what a niche is.

A niche isn’t just sector-deep. It needn’t even be about industry.

Their new niching is what good marketers, and great positioning pros, have been doing for ages.

Now, some of the best niche strategies focus on company size, stage of growth, geography, or a particular world view along with category and other descriptors. 

For example, a business may decide that its niche is defined by turnover bands across many industries rather than by trade alone. 

Segmentation, done well, isn’t about chasing the latest label. It’s about understanding which characteristics genuinely define your most profitable best-fit customers—from their particular needs to the way they perceive value.

Let’s take this right back to the beginning. 

Marketing begins with diagnosis.

Your positioning is a strategic decision, but you can’t build strategy on sand so you need to diagnose your brand, your market and your competitors.

That means doing the research: understanding both how your business views its place in the market and how customers see the landscape. This isn’t a box-ticking exercise; it’s essential to finding product-market fit. 

Without solid research, any attempt at positioning is little more than guesswork. With a price tag. And a 180 further down the line.

With research in place, the next step is strategy. 

This is simply about making choices, deciding where to play, and, perhaps more importantly, where not to play. 

It’s not about refusing all and any business that falls outside your Ideal Customer Profile, it's about clarity in how resources, communications, propositions and campaigns are focussed.

The foundation of marketing strategy is Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning. You down with STP? Yeah you know me. Sorry not sorry.

Segmentation examines who is buying in your category. 

Targeting identifies where you’re strongest, where margin and differentiation are greatest, and where you can outflank the competition - sometimes by geography, sometimes by business life cycle, sometimes by specific job roles.

Positioning then becomes less about slogans and more about articulating what you need to be to win with these groups.

Creativity comes later.

The emotional punch of a proposition can only follow sound diagnosis and a clear strategy. 

And if any so-called expert leaps straight to the pitch without understanding the market context, take their advice lightly.

A caution: avoid the trap of mimicry. 

Too many companies invest in branding and straplines which focus solely on phrases already used by competitors.

If your key message could sit comfortably in your rival’s campaign, the work hasn’t gone deep enough. 

Proper competitive analysis means reviewing how others present themselves so that your brand stands out for the right reasons.

The branded water aisle illustrates all this perfectly.

Liquid Death take an anti-category, rock ‘n’ roll stance. Evian leans on purity and the Alps. Both are in the water category, in theory the most commoditised category there is, but they have made informed choices to put a flag in their own brand territory.

My favourite brand example is Coca-Cola. 

Coke trades on classic Americana and Christmas, whilst Pepsi leans into youth, being the new to Coke’s old. Despite both being nothing more than brown sugar water, smart positioning ensures each brand is memorable, and mentally available when a purchase decision comes around.

Good positioning doesn’t mean owning a category, it means being distinctive, memorable, and relevant to the customers you are best placed to serve. 

Understand the market, know your competition, and make deliberate decisions about where to focus, then build creative on a strategy that’s informed, not improvised.