Positioning That Actually Shifts Units.

Let’s start with an uncomfortable diagnosis.

If you sound like everyone else in your category, it’s not because your copywriter is shit.

It’s because your positioning is weak.

And weak positioning doesn’t just make you boring.
It makes you unchoosable.

Why most positioning fails

Most positioning work starts in completely the wrong place.

Inside the building.

It starts with leadership opinions, internal aspirations, and long discussions about what the company would like to be known for.

It ends with the usual corporate nothingness.

“We care more.”
“We’re a trusted partner.”
“We deliver end to end solutions.”

Congratulations. You’ve just described most of the market.

Buyers don’t give a toss what you aspire to be.

They care how you compare within your set.

Buyers never judge you in isolation

This is the bit businesses consistently forget.

Nobody wakes up thinking about your brand. Not once. Not ever.

Buyers think in categories. They compare options.

You versus alternatives.
You versus incumbents.
You versus doing absolutely fucking nothing. You’ll be surprised how often this is the actual competitive option.

Positioning isn’t self-expression.

It’s competitive decision framing.

If your positioning doesn’t help a buyer decide why you over someone else, it’s decoration.
Nice to look at. Commercially useless.

“But we are different”

Maybe. i mean, almost certainly not but lets roll with it for now.

But different isn’t the goal.

Relevant difference is.

If the difference doesn’t matter to the buyer, doesn’t influence the decision, or doesn’t justify switching, then it might as well not exist.

Internal uniqueness that buyers don’t value is just corporate navel-gazing.

Get it in the bin.

What positioning actually has to do

Good positioning answers three questions quickly.

First, what category are you in?

Buyers need to know when to think of you.

Second, who are you for?

So the right people lean in and the wrong ones politely fuck off.

Third, why choose you over the alternatives?

And crucially, on criteria that actually matter.

If your positioning doesn’t do all three, it isn’t positioning.

It’s a mission statement wearing a strategy costume.

How I approach positioning

This process is deliberately unemotional. It has to be, there’s no room for ego and no room for subjectivity.

Positioning isn’t therapy for leadership teams. I don't care what you like, I don't care what your nephew likes. I care about what the market will respond to.

It’s a commercial decision.

Category first. Always.

If buyers can’t easily place you in a category, they won’t shortlist you.

Which means clear category signals. Familiar language. No invented nonsense.

And absolutely no “category of one” wet dreaming.

Creating a new category is slow, expensive and usually a terrible idea unless you’ve got a hefty war chest and tons of patience.

Most businesses have neither.

Competitive context. This is where honesty hurts.

Next we map reality.

Who you are actually compared against.
Where you win.
Where you lose.
Where you should stop competing entirely.

This stage tends to kill a few loved but irrational beliefs.

Good.

Those beliefs were probably costing you deals.

Positioning is just as much about where not to play as where to push.

Buying criteria. Not brand fluff.

Finally we anchor positioning on the things buyers actually use to decide.

Risk reduction.
Speed.
Proof.
Fit for purpose.
Total cost, not just price.

Your positioning must ladder directly into those criteria.

If it doesn’t, sales ends up carrying the entire argument on their backs.

Which is exhausting. And expensive. And they can be very moany too. Sorry, not sorry.

Where positioning has to show up

Positioning is not a slide in a strategy deck.

It’s a system. It’s a basis for all that you are and can be.

You should see it immediately on the homepage. In sales conversations. In pitch decks. In how case studies are framed. In how anyone in the company explains what you do without needing a fucking paragraph.

If it only exists in a strategy document, it doesn’t exist.

The commercial impact

When positioning is actually right, a few very useful things happen.

Sales conversations start further down the funnel.

Objections reduce.
Win rates improve.
Discount pressure drops.
You stop defaulting to price fights.

That’s not fanciful brand theory.

That’s bottom-line margin protection.

A case in point

Inversity launched as an AI training platform for exam-age kids as an unknown brand in an immature category.

We had our Ideal Customer Profiles. We had our target geography. We had a marketing strategy.

We needed a position and a hook to take to market.

We came up with both.

Invent tomorrow, today set Inversity up as a future forward offering, giving students of today a competitive advantage in the ever-developing AI assisted world of work. It was practical, it delivered results, it was human at a time when competitors might as well have been speaking Klingon.

Then the hook. Caveat that this was before he went full Tommy Robinson, but we wanted something that would get into the room even if it risked dividing it.

Which of your students are the Elons of the future?

Every magnet event was fully subscribed. Jobs a good 'un.

The line everyone needs to hear

Positioning is not about being liked. It’s about being chosen.

Those are very different things.

Final thought

If you remove your logo and it still clearly sounds like you, that’s positioning.

If it could be anyone in the category, it will be no one.