Promotion or Positioning? How are you building your business ...

The tables are turning, or are they? Have I discovered a profound or breakthrough method of marketing? Or is this just a new twist on an old idea? Before we get too far, let?s define my interpretation of promotion and positioning.

Promotion can be interruptive marketing. For example, you might be listening to your favorite song on the radio; the next thing you might hear is a car dealer telling you that they have a big sale and all cars are marked down 70%. You have no intentions of looking for a car. All you wanted was to listen to the music. What advertisers have done is interrupt your pattern to change your way of thinking to get you thinking about buying a car. They are pushing the fact that their prices are so low it will force you to take action, even though you had no intention to take action before their advertisement.

That form of advertising is what all of us have been doing for years, interrupting the customer?s pattern in order to have our message read. I hope I am not putting this in a derogatory way; it is just the way it has always been done.

Now, take the same automobile dealer. Instead of spending money on a radio spot, he appears at a car show wearing his Cadillac hat and looking to sell a brand new Cadillac. Now the dealer would put signage in his allotted space, with signs about the virtues of a specific brand of Cadillac. It might be as simple as making a statement such as, ?This vehicle will hold its value over the years.?

What is the difference in the two scenarios we just laid out? In the first scenario, the business owner is advertising to people who have no intentions of purchasing a car. They are trying to build their business by marketing products that they hope, and sometimes pray, that someone will buy. In the second scenario, the business owner is promoting their product to a group of people who have more of an interest in purchasing what they want to sell, in this case a Cadillac.

There are more choices that we can enlist in positioning our businesses. Here are a few:

• As the quality leader, which conjures up thoughts that the product may be more expensive but the customer is getting what they pay for.
• The next type of positioning is to position your business as the recognized expert in your industry. The difference between quality and expertise is that someone can carry quality products but not know a darn thing about them. I am sure we have all experienced this.
• Another way of positioning would be as the price leader, by constantly telling the world through various forms of advertising that your prices are the cheapest. There are plenty of people who believe that is the way to go. I vehemently disagree, because all you are doing is making a customer loyal to price.
• A business can also position itself by marketing to a certain type of person, perhaps a luxury type of buyer. That does not mean the product has to be a luxury item, but the manner of service and the class of customer would position the business in a sophisticated or a ?snob appeal? approach.
• There are also many businesses that position themselves as the convenience type of business. This would emphasize something that would be in-stock inventory and exhibit speed in every aspect of the process.
• One other positioning strategy might be a community involvement type of positioning, where the customer feels guilty buying anywhere else.

The bottom line is about catering to a specific group of customers because you know they have an interest in what you are selling or the way in which you sell it. In positioning, it is not just what you sell - it is also how you sell it, in a manner that attracts a specific group of customers.

Now let?s look at promotion. There are thousands of different promotions that work, but again these are not promotions that cater to a market segment. We can have all types of sales, but other than your current customers, that is interruptive marketing where the customer has no intention of buying.

What social media has done is make positioning even more important as we can pinpoint all the little girls that are into American Beauty dolls, or all the boys that love G.I. Joe.

So which is best? I think the most successful approach today is knowing your niche, knowing how you want your business positioned, then promoting with those goals in mind.

Here is another way of looking at the whole thing. Google sells Adwords. You can probably find a website that has something to do with computer software. They purchase Google Adwords related to the type of software. They might get millions of hits but it might cost them four to five dollars per click through. I had a neighbor who sold a highly specialized computer program just for high-end programmers and developers. He paid sixty-five dollars per click through, which might seem expensive. However, that list was so focused and so powerful, that by paying $65 per click through, he saved over a million dollars on traditional catalogs.

We are living in an age of specialists. We want to do business with people who know what they are talking about. That does not mean we should abandon all of our promotions, because we have the proverbial captive audience. Once we bring them to a site, we have to do whatever we can to convert, keep in touch, and offer whatever type of promotion that will get them to return and buy again.

In conclusion, just as I thought this might be a revolutionary or break through concept, I realized that 35 years ago retailers would fight over the best method to advertise. Was it better to do institutional advertising, where you just talk about the business, which would be a slower type of advertising? Should you run a sale type promotion that would bring people through the front door? This concept is new with a new twist. Now ask yourself, what kind of advertising should/do you do? Where do you spend your money, on promotion or position?

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