Writing a positioning statement that is not corporate filler

Aug 27
3 min read

Updated: 2 days ago

Introduction

Most published positioning statements are unusable. Long sentences about empowering customers through innovative solutions, signifying nothing and guiding no decisions.

A useful positioning statement is an internal document. It records a decision about who you are for, what you do, and why somebody would choose you rather than the alternative. Customers never see it; it shapes everything they do see.

1. Writing a positioning statement means making a decision, not a slogan

The value is in the choosing rather than the wording.

If your statement could describe three competitors, no decision has been made. The point is to commit to serving some people and not others, and to a specific reason for being chosen — which is uncomfortable, which is why the filler versions exist.

2. Name the customer specifically

Vagueness here makes everything downstream vague.

Not "small businesses" but "independent dental practices with two to four surgeries" or "landlords with fewer than ten properties." The narrower the definition, the more useful every subsequent sentence in the statement becomes.

3. State the problem you solve, in their words

The problem, as the customer would describe it.

Not the service you deliver but the situation they are in. "Cannot fill appointment slots after a cancellation" rather than "appointment optimisation services." If you cannot write this in the customer's language, you may not know it well enough.

4. Say what category you are in

Customers need to file you somewhere before they can evaluate you.

An accountancy firm, a commercial cleaning contractor, a design studio. Clever positioning that refuses to name a category leaves the customer unable to work out what you actually are, which is worse than being conventional.

5. Give the specific reason to choose you

The hardest line and the one that carries the statement.

Not quality or service. Something a competitor could not honestly claim: a method, a specialism, a guarantee, a qualification, a body of experience in one sector, an access arrangement, a speed nobody else offers.

6. Be able to support it with evidence

A positioning claim you cannot substantiate is a liability.

For each element, ask what proof exists: results, credentials, client examples, published prices, a documented process. A statement that cannot survive the question "why should I believe that?" needs to be rewritten rather than defended.

7. Keep it to a few sentences and write it plainly

Length is inversely related to usefulness here.

Two or three sentences that anybody in the business could recite. If it needs a paragraph of explanation, the decision underneath it has not been made clearly enough, and nobody will use it.

8. Use it as a filter for actual decisions

This is what makes it worth writing.

Whether to take a job, what to put on the homepage, which market to enter, what to say in a quote, whether to add a service. A positioning statement that has never caused you to decline something is not doing any work.

9. Test it against your customers and your staff

The two audiences who will tell you whether it is true.

Ask customers whether it describes why they chose you, and staff whether it describes what the business actually does. Where either disagrees, you have either a positioning problem or a statement describing an aspiration rather than reality.

Conclusion

Treat it as an internal decision-making tool rather than a slogan, because the value lies in committing to something specific.

Name the customer narrowly, state their problem in their own words, place yourself in a category customers recognise, give a concrete reason to be chosen that a competitor could not honestly claim, check that every element can be evidenced, keep it to two or three plain sentences anybody could recite, use it to decide what to decline as well as what to pursue, and test it against both customers and staff to confirm it describes reality rather than ambition.