One of the most important aspects of marketing is positioning your company in your space — but many remodelers often overlook this critical component. However, it’s the best way to separate your company from the competition, especially if you’re in a crowded market or competing against entrenched firms.
Wes Powell, co-owner and vice-president of Builder Funnel, says positioning isn’t something you do with your products or services, but instead it happens in the mind of your prospect. Comparing it to the automobile industry, Mercedes-Benz might hold the position of quality, Volkswagen might hold the position of economy, and Toyota might hold the position of reliability, but each one has its unique position in your mind and none of them overlap.
This is an important concept to remember — positioning only happens in relation to your competition. Without competitors, positioning wouldn’t matter. There’d be a line around the block filled with homeowners in your area who want to remodel their homes. And then they’d break down your door. But you do have competitors (and probably a lot of them), so your position in the minds of your potential clients is vital.
Stand Out from the Crowd
What happens more often than not is every remodeling company says they offer high quality or the lowest price, or both. It becomes nearly impossible to stand out and differentiate from your competition.
But what would happen if you said you offered a high-quality product or service, but at a high price, and then listed the reasons why that are important to the customer? On the surface it may sound like a crazy idea, but it can be a legitimate position to hold in the marketplace. After all, wouldn’t you rather be positioned as a company that offers a high-quality product or service at a high price and stand out from the competition rather than be part of a crowded look-alike market?
Next Steps
The next steps in positioning your company include such marketing techniques as:
- Determining the price of admission
- Looking for the hole
- Being the first in the marketplace in a certain position
- Having a positioning statement
- Not trying to be everything to everybody
You also have to understand that sometimes you simply can’t change the customer’s mind. Wes goes into more detail about all these techniques and more in his lesson Positioning Your Company, available now as part of the free trial for the new and improved Remodelers University.
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