Positioning
Positioning
What is positioning?
- Define your place in the customer’s mind
- Aim at perception, not the product
- The sharper, the more memorable
The first thing that changes once you set your positioning isn’t the message but your criteria for saying no. The moment you decide which position to own, you see that it’s better to turn down inquiries and proposal requests that don’t fit it. The fight shifts from filling in competitor comparison tables by adding product specs line by line to choosing which rung of the ladder customers already hold in their heads you’ll climb onto. That is why the output of positioning work is not just a slogan, but also a list of what you will no longer do.
Axes usually fall into four types: attribute (fastest, most accurate), user (built only for mid-size manufacturers), use case (built only for month-end close), and competitive response (what the market leader structurally cannot do). In B2B, the attribute axis is the most common choice, but features get copied within months, so user and use-case axes last longer. Meanwhile, in STP, segmentation and targeting decide 'who to sell to', while positioning decides 'which slot in that person's mind to occupy', and the USP is just the one-line sentence that expresses that slot. A position is confirmed not when the company declares it, but when customers start saying the same thing.
The most common mistake in practice is confusing positioning with a rebrand. If you change only the logo and website copy, but leave the proposal outline, the quote price sheet, and the first three sentences your salespeople say untouched, your place in the customer’s mind doesn’t move an inch. The second is overhauling your positioning axis every quarter: if the message changes before perception has built up, the response you get back is 'we still don’t know what that company does'. The third is choosing an axis customers don’t agree with. If you believe technology is your differentiator but customers remember you for delivery times and response speed, closing that gap costs more than winning new business.
John KimInstructor John Kim, author of B2B Marketing Design and CEO of Nanum Consulting
Euijung KimBrand strategist with 30 years in advertising, formerly a division head at Daehong CommunicationsThe concept was introduced by Al Ries and Jack Trout in their 1972 Advertising Age series ('The Positioning Era') and popularized by their 1981 book Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind. The core idea: 'a position exists in the customer’s mind'.
Let’s look at a hypothetical case. Company A sells warehouse management (WMS) software, with 45 employees and KRW 7 billion (≈ US$5,237,200) in annual revenue. Over the past year it won only 3 of 20 proposals. It kept losing to large system integrators for being 'too small' and to low-cost package vendors for being 'too expensive.' The CEO told the marketing team to redefine its position within six months.
- The marketing director went back through 38 proposals from the past year, and the feedback on the 22 that lost boiled down to one line: 'Great features, but they look like overkill for a company like ours.'
- The head of sales phoned 12 existing customers directly, and 7 of them said the same thing: "The only company that really knows 3PL warehouse operations". That line went onto the list of positioning candidates.
- At the executive meeting, the CEO declared, "We won’t take large manufacturer warehouse deals this year," narrowing the target to mid-size 3PL only.
- The cover line on proposals changed from 'Integrated Logistics Platform' to 'WMS built for mid-sized 3PLs, live in 4 weeks.' All 27 materials, including the website and sales deck, were unified around the same sentence.
- The three salespeople’s first-visit scripts also changed from feature explanations to 3PL settlement and multi-shipper operations. The team lead listened to two call recordings a week to catch where the message was leaking.
- Six months later, proposals had dropped from 20 to 14, but wins rose to 7, taking the win rate from 15% to 50%, and the average contract value also climbed from KRW 84 million (≈ US$62,800) to KRW 120 million (≈ US$89,800).