THE FIRST STEP IN POSITIONING: KNOW YOUR COMPETITION
Why do you need to think about “positioning” your company? What does it mean, anyway? A positioning statement stands for one unique element — something no other company can say — that will give your organization a competitive edge. It gives value to your brand. It supplies a reason to buy. Positioning your organization in the minds of your customers is one of the most valuable things you can do.

Positioning is difficult because it’s counterintuitive — most companies instinctively do what others in their fields are doing to succeed. Be honest, now — don’t you look to what your peers are doing to know what’s “acceptable” for your industry? But that won’t position you to stand out.

What’s your competition doing?
You do need to check them out, however. Defining your position in the market couldn’t be complete or realistic without looking at who else is occupying that space. It’s possible to spend a lot of time on this step, in terms of determining competitive market share and other statistical analysis, but we’re not talking about that here — we just need some basic information. If you do a few simple things to analyze your competition’s positioning, you’ll be way ahead of most companies.

Make a list, take a look around
First, make a list of your direct competitors — the ones your Ideal Customer most considers to be your competition — and look for everything you can find out about them. Go to their websites and print out the major pages. Gather any print literature or products you can find from your competition. If you have a sales force, contact them for help. Often sales people have a stash of competitors' catalogs and brochures. Look through industry trade magazines and make copies of their ads, and get ahold of their annual reports.

How to easily analyze your competitors’ brands
Now, review the materials. Look for common themes within each competitor company. Make note of a few elements for each competitor: What is their tagline? What main colors do they use? Graphics? Photos? Themes? What is their main claim or reason to buy?

After you’ve analyzed each competitor individually, analyze the entire group in the same way. What common themes run through them? What common colors, graphics, and visuals do many of your competitors use? What taglines are similar? What common language do they use? What common promises do they make? While some companies may have no rhyme or reason to their communications, many will be surprisingly similar.

In most industries, the results of this exercise are amazingly predictable. Companies within the same industries tend to do things the same way, in many of the ways they communicate. They share the same types of visuals, graphics, wording, colors, themes, claims, and sometimes even have very similar logos. Don’t take my word for it, do this exercise yourself! Write out all of their taglines for comparison. Lay all of their logos side by side. Look at their colors side by side. You’ll find it isn’t going to be difficult to be different!

Now, before you go off half-cocked, thinking that all you need to do to position yourself in your market is to be different than these folks, you need to know that you’ve only scratched the surface here. This is only background information that’s going to be useful as you move forward. You still need to find the positioning that fits your Brand Character, Personality, and Ideal Customer. You don’t want to be different just to be different.