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Mark Evans: Hey. It's Mark Evans. Before we kick off today's podcast, I have some very exciting news. I just launched a new live cohort based course on how to create better brand positioning. This is something that I've wanted to do for a long time, and thanks to Maven, I finally made it happen.
It starts May 9. It consists of five sessions. We'll cover insights into why positioning matters. We'll do worksheets and exercises to turn ideas and approaches into tangible assets, and I'll walk you through my positioning framework that I've used with dozens of companies over the past fifteen years. To learn more, visit maven.com/mark-evans/brand-positioning.
Check it out. If you have any questions, you can email me at mark@markevans.ca. Now let's get to the podcast. So what happens if you put two brand positioning geeks in a room? Well, you get a very animated conversation about why positioning matters, how to tell if your positioning is not working, what are the keys to positioning deliverables, and what to do once you've developed brand positioning.
I was excited to interview Clay Ostrom from Map and Fire, someone who I follow on LinkedIn, who shares my belief that positioning matters to everything within the organization, marketing, sales, HR, product, and raising capital. My conversation with Clay covers a lot of different topics from different angles, and I'm excited to share it with you today. Welcome to Marketing Spark, Clay.
Clay Ostrom: Thank you so much, Mark. It's great to be here. Super excited to talk about this stuff.
Mark Evans: Let's start with the basics. And for many people, this will be new information. For people like you and I who obsess over positioning, this is positioning one zero one. What is positioning, and why is it important? Loaded question.
We can go on all kinds of different places, but I think it's a good place to start.
Clay Ostrom: It's a great place to start. It is it is a loaded question. The most simple terms possible, I think of positioning as your unique place in the market. Right? It's at the end of the day, what we're trying to figure out is where you fit, where you can occupy a space that people can understand and remember.
And within that, there's a lot of pieces that we can that we can dig into. But but I think that's at the end of the day, that's kind of what we're trying to drive at. We're trying to drive at creating something memorable, a connection that people can understand and, again, understand the value that you're that you're providing, that your brand provides. Would you would you agree with that? Do you have a a different nice, clean, simple way of describing it?
Mark Evans: The way that I talk about positioning and it's weird talking to someone who is a positioning guru as well. Right? It's like talking to a like minded person. I'm like talking to a person in the mirror. The way that I describe it is positioning really clearly articulates what you do, who you serve, why what you do matters to them, and how you're unique, different, or better.
How does that align with the way that you look at the world?
Clay Ostrom: So if we move past that just initial top line statement, yeah, we immediately get into the who you serve, the which market you're in, the what value you provide, the how you're different, all of those different pieces that that you often see when you're maybe if you're looking at I think anybody who's done any work around positioning has probably stumbled onto a template or two that tries to distill all of this into a simple statement, and it's often built around those fundamental building blocks. Of course, the devil's in the details and and really understanding those things on a deep level and understanding your differentiation and your value, those are the things that we end up spending a lot of time talking about when we work on it with with companies.
Mark Evans: You and I understand the importance of positioning, and we advocate it continuously and enthusiastically. Do you think that many entrepreneurs don't understand what positioning is and why it's important? And as a result, they give positioning short drift. It's not seen as a priority. Tactical execution often takes so much of their attention.
And then we need a go to market plan, and that's important. And positioning is almost like the person who sits in the corner when everyone's having a good time at the den. They're there. No one's really paying attention to them. Is that does that strike you as a way that you see most entrepreneurs and how they view the world, the positioning world?
Clay Ostrom: I think somewhat. I would say it's encouraging to me that I feel like the conversation is evolving and getting more sophisticated. Now I always have to check myself a little bit because, again, I would love to hear your thoughts on this, but there's always a little bit of the danger of being in the echo chamber of other marketers or people who are in the space who do understand it. Just like any business, it's easy to take for granted certain things or overestimate people's understanding of certain things. But but I do feel like the conversation has grown, and people are getting more sophisticated about it, talking about it more.
I will say that to your point about maybe being the the the person nobody wants to talk to in the corner of the party, we we position our own workaround positioning within brand. We think about brand positioning, and I feel like that is a way to help make it a little bit more accessible or kinda get our foot in the door with people to a certain degree, and then we sort of introduce them into more of the the nitty gritty of of what really goes into the positioning conversation. But but I feel like people at least have some touch point with it. Maybe they don't fully understand it, or maybe they haven't gone through a process to dig dig super deep into it, but they have some kind of touch point. So what do you think?
Is that do you feel like the people you talk to have varying levels of understanding of it?
Mark Evans: Some get it. Some don't. I think that what you may be sensing is that there's a growing interest in positioning. If you look at the b to b b to b SaaS landscape, 2020, 2021 for sure, and the first few months of twenty twenty two, we were in this robust digital transformation ecosystem. Everybody was doing well.
The rising tide lifted all ships. It really didn't matter if your positioning was good. It really didn't matter whether you were firing on all cylinders when it came to your marketing and your sales enablement. It mattered as if you had a digital product and that you were actively open for business. Even crappy companies with okay products did well, and the good companies obviously did very well.
What I'm sensing now is that as sales become more challenging, as companies become more desperate for leads, they recognize that if they don't stand out from the crowd, if they don't establish a competitive edge, then they're just gonna spin their wheels at best. Or they could be one of those companies that fades away. Maybe positioning is getting more attention because they recognize that it can be a way to outflank the competition. Your thoughts?
Clay Ostrom: Yeah. I think that I think there's a lot of truth to that for sure. I think I think when people start thinking about positioning, it is often a byproduct of a struggle or a plateau or some we're not growing fast enough. We're not achieving the things we wanna achieve. So how do we better do that?
And sometimes there's a natural inclination to jump to the end of, well, what's our message? Or what's our what is that ad campaign? Or what's that thing? And, ultimately, as we know, it all comes back to positioning positioning to drive those things, to make those things effective. So maybe there's a little bit of a backtracking that happens to get into positioning.
But I agree with you. I think when there's struggles in the market or struggles within a particular company, it's always critical to to really think about that stuff. Also, when you're in a a market that's super commoditized, if there's a just a ton of competition that's supersaturated, obviously, then it also is critical. That's something that exists all the time regardless of up or down market. If you're just in a space that happens to be super, supersaturated, it's it's really hard to stand alone.
Mark Evans: Yeah. Well and and you could argue that every single b to b SaaS marketplace is supersaturated because barriers to entry have come down. Launching a company is relatively easy. I say relatively in quotation marks. That if you haven't got position and you haven't got a robust marketing budget, then you're really at a disadvantage.
I wanna pick up on something you said in terms of how a company knows that it has a positioning problem. What are some of the symptoms or some of the signs that our positioning isn't working? And what do you think tips people over from thinking about it, exploring the idea to actually saying, gotta do something about it?
Clay Ostrom: Again, because it is really at the heart of the business, I think it's easy for me, and then maybe you feel the same way, to say, well, almost any struggles that you're having from a from a business perspective could be connected back to your positioning probably on some level. Certainly, I if you're thinking about marketing and sales specifically, that could be anything from we're not getting great engagement on our website. We're not getting people to dig deeper into the site. They're bouncing. They're coming and staying for a few seconds and leaving because they don't maybe even get what we do, let alone put us in the right consideration set for something that might be applicable to them.
On the sales side, it's longer sales cycles and longer conversations and having to have three conversations with a client instead of maybe one or two because there's so many questions, and and you're not able to tell a succinct story about what that that value is. When we think about our customers and we think about the evaluation process, say, they they they actually do have a sense of what they need, and they spend a bunch of time evaluating a bunch of competitors in your space, and they're going from site to site to site to site. You just don't have a lot of opportunity to, or you don't have a lot of time to to make your case and and to occupy against some kind of place in their mind that that that's memorable and they can come back to. So, yeah. So I I again, I think it affects all of those things.
I think it really affects virtually every expression of your marketing and sales. Don't know. Do you think that's overstepping at all, or do you do you do you kind of look at it the same?
Mark Evans: I think it sounds really good in theory. I think that as somebody who spends a lot of time and focus on positioning, it's something that truly that you believe. But I would say that many companies, they look at the fact that their website's not converting or they've got how high bounce rates or their sales cycles are long, they're looking for quick hacks. This whole growth hacker movement, if I change the color of the CTA or the wording of the CTA, if I reconfigure my navigation or put my social proof higher up or embed a video in the home page, those kind of things are gonna change the ballgame. It's gonna make a difference, and then I'll be able to measure it using data because they always go back to data.
It's almost like they're scratching the surface. They see the symptoms, but they don't see the root cause. And I would argue that a lot of them don't see positioning as a problem. I think it takes them time to get their heads around. It's almost like they panic and they realize, oh my god.
I got a story problem after they've gone through this checklist of change that, change that, change that, and nothing's changed. Maybe I'm being overly dramatic, but I I think that a lot of companies think that way because they're looking for quick fixes, and positioning takes time to develop. Yeah.
Clay Ostrom: I I agree with that. I think, of course and and all the things you mentioned do matter. Right? They those things are important. The the UX, the experience of of the site, the the choice of color, the choice of CTAs.
Like, all of these things matter. It's not that that they don't. But like you said, I think it's easy to get in a cycle of tweaking a 100 little things because you feel like you're doing something. You feel like you're you've got a new thing to test. You've got a new idea that you can quickly implement, but it really may not be, like you said, really, it's kind of scratching the surface.
It's not necessarily getting at the heart of stuff. And and I really do believe that, yeah, you can be moving all these little pebbles around, but then you've got this giant boulder in the middle that is your position and is ideally being expressed through your core messaging. And if, again, if that story is is missing the mark, it kinda doesn't matter if you're moving all the little pebbles around. It's the boulder is just kind of sitting there like a lump or or it's pushing people along, whichever, however you wanna use that, metaphor, I guess.
Mark Evans: We started the conversation with a positioning one on one question. Let me ask you another. What are the dangers of ignoring positioning or not having clear positioning, positioning that resonates, positioning that makes an impact, that differentiates you from the competition. If you don't have good positioning, what are the consequences? What are the ramifications?
Clay Ostrom: Well, I I think it again, it comes back to all the stuff we've been talking about. I think at the end of the day, you're nothing you do is going to be particularly memorable or effective. You it's it's gonna be extremely hard for any of your customers to to really remember who you are in the space. There's just so much noise out there. You as you said, I think there's there's not a lot of categories out there that aren't supersaturated.
And if you are ignoring the position and you you haven't nailed it down, you're you're just gonna continue to to struggle. You're always gonna be limited by that on some level. I don't know if I'm maybe there's more to that question. But so were you just saying, like, what are the what are the other challenges you run into? Or
Mark Evans: What are the consequences of not having clear positioning? Because, you know, as we mentioned, every company operates in ultra competitive marketplaces. Lots of things will give you an edge. It could be the fact that your product is user friendly or that it's less expensive than the competition or it has an amazing brand because your customers love it. That could set you apart.
That could be the way that you could rally around positioning the marketplace. But if you don't have that, if you really haven't nailed down what to do and why it matters, then the risk is that you'll be lost in the crowd is that you'll have a product, but it'll be more meh than anything else. People won't love it because they really don't know why it matters to them. And I think that's ultimately what it comes down to. Does this product is it relevant to what I may need?
Could it deliver the experience that I want?
Clay Ostrom: Yeah. That meh. That that meh sounds not, like, the worst thing in the world, but meh really is super dangerous. We actually did an interesting research study recently where we were we did a survey of business leaders. We we surveyed final numbers over a 100 or so, and we were essentially having them self rate their their brand overall, their positioning, and their messaging.
And we were just kinda I just it was curious to see how people would where they would place themselves. What was interesting was there were, of course, a segment of people who we rate had them rate on a scale of one to 10. And there was a segment of people, of course, in that nine to 10 range who felt like we're super solid. And there was also a segment of people in that one to six range of they probably really do need to do some work, but there was a real the biggest segment was in that seven to eight range. And what I think is so interesting about that is, to me, that is the that is the embodiment of meh.
That is absolutely the the segment that you really can be super dangerous in a sneaky way because it means we're probably okay enough to maybe it's not raising a super giant red flag internally, but nobody's gonna remember you in that range. And it's kinda like NPS scoring, and and that's kind of what we used as the the crux of it where nine to tens are your your your people who super they're they're supportive of your brand. One to six are the detractors, and the seven or eight are basically nothing. They're they don't really count because they're kind of you just kind of in one ear and out the other. So I think that's a that's a really interesting piece of what we're talking about right now, which is maybe people being in that seven to eight range, not fully recognizing there's an issue at hand, but secretly suffering from having a lack of clear positioning as well.
Mark Evans: The results that you saw make sense to me. I think one of the things that we suffer from or companies suffer come in a fast moving marketplace is good enough. This this acceptance of good enough. It's not bad. It's not awesome, but it's okay.
And so companies will continue to operate with good enough positioning, good enough messaging, good enough marketing and sales. They'll think that they'll be able to run their business efficiently, that they'll be successful with good enough. And I think you and I recognize that good enough isn't good enough. Is that unless you stand out from the crowd, then there's no way that you're gonna get the success that you want, the business momentum that you want, the competitive edge that you want. And that may be the biggest thing that we struggle against as positioning advocates is that people don't really appreciate the importance of positioning going back to the original question where we started off this conversation.
Clay Ostrom: I think the the danger again of pretty good is is bigger than most people think. And I think a lot of it can come back to lack of expertise, lack of process to go through positioning and really dig into it in a deep way. And, again, there's there's plenty of templates out there that help you sort of fill in the blanks, Mad Lib style of here's your customer, and here's your value, and here's your market, and here's your differentiators. And I think that's where you end up in that meh range where you you kind of check the box. You answer the questions.
You fill in the blanks. And I think a lot of the times, it it ends up that you end up answering them with sort of, well, this is the first thing that came to mind. These are the ideas that we've been talking about for years, and, of course, these are the answers. And you're really not digging below the surface and thinking about it in a super, again, structured or deeper way, and that's how I think you end up in that that big meaty man range.
Mark Evans: So we're aligned in the fact that companies understand the importance of of positioning. Most of their position is pretty bad.
Clay Ostrom: Yeah. Yeah. I'm not I'm not I'm gonna paint everybody in that.
Mark Evans: Just Don't lie. But I think we're agreed that a lot of companies can definitely improve their positioning if they recognize that their positioning needs to be improved. So let's assume that I'm an entrepreneur or CEO or CMO, and I recognize that I need better positioning. My customer story isn't as powerful, isn't as compelling as it should be, or it pales in comparison to the competition. How do companies start with positioning?
What are some of the things that the checkpoints along the way that a company is going to go through with whether they do it themselves or whether they do it with someone like you or me that will take them from bad positioning to the end product where they've got much better positioning? Walk me through that that process.
Clay Ostrom: We have spent a lot of time refining our process over the years and really trying to really trying to get it as lean and clear as possible. A big part of just to go off topic slightly, a big part of our mission and and how I like to work is I really wanna go through this type of work with companies and help them understand the process, not just spit out an output or give them an answer or whatever, but really take them through it and give them tools and frameworks that they can continue to use because I'm sure you would agree that positioning, just like every other part of your business, is is an evolving thing. It's obviously not a a one and done exercise, even though some people might treat it that way at times. So we do have a really strong process, I think, and I and that's what I really like about going through the work with people. And we kinda break it up into three major pieces.
So we start with customers. The the three pieces are essentially customers, competition, and offering. That's that's how we at least that's how we think about it. I think it all starts with customers. I think everything ultimately starts with customers and understanding them on a deep level.
And, specifically, I think it's really valuable to think about your customers' needs completely separate from what you do. So not even getting into your offering yet or exactly how you solve their needs, but just on its own, what are your customers trying to achieve, obviously, related to your business on some level? But but what's what are their motivators? What are the outcomes that they're seeking? What what kind of value are they do they most prioritize?
I don't know if you are you a jobs to be done guy, fan? Do you do you have a a take on jobs to be done as a as a framework?
Mark Evans: The jobs to be done methodology is interesting because to be totally transparent, it wasn't something that was part of the way that I worked with clients until probably about a year ago. Interesting. And for whatever reason, I recognize that a lot of the time we're ignoring the end user. We're we're we say that we're aligned with what the customer wants and the experiences that they're seeking, but we forget about the fact that people go to work, they fire up their computers or however they do their work. During the day, they're doing different little tasks and that we need to be aware of the fact that this is their world, and we're our job is to make that world easier.
So, yes, the long answer to your question is yes. I believe that the jobs to be done methodology.
Clay Ostrom: Nice. Yeah. I think, again, going off of what I was just saying, I think, again, what I really like about it is that it does create this nice, healthy separation from what their needs are, what they're trying to achieve separate from what you have as an offering and what your solution is. And so we we lean a lot on that, and we also use the elements of value, which is another framework created by Bain and Company. You're probably familiar with that one too.
But but the the combination of those two things, I think, is a, to me, a great starting point for really understanding your customers. So understanding, again, what are their needs and what do they value in a solution, or what are they considering when they make a purchase, essentially. So that's kinda where we start. We spend a lot of time on competition. I know people have I I'd actually love to hear your thoughts about this too because people have differing views about competition.
Some people kinda fall into this camp of ignore your competition. Competition doesn't matter. Just focus on yourself. Focus on your customers. I've never really understood that point of view.
I don't know where you fall on the spectrum of how much to focus or little to focus on your competition, but what are your what are your thoughts on that?
Mark Evans: Ignore the competition is something that you see gurus, marketing gurus on LinkedIn posting time and time again. And every time they post that, I go, you're full of it. That is that's such an ignorant view of the world because two things happen. One is you if you ignore the competition, you have no idea what they're doing. You have no idea how they position themselves in the marketing that they're doing.
So you're operating in blissful ignorance. The second thing is that if you go through the process of developing this positioning and you come out the other end and your positioning is the exact same as your biggest competitor, then you really haven't done a good job positioning. That's my view of the world.
Clay Ostrom: Again, I think we're aligned. So that's that's that's good to know. But, yeah, I think, yeah, to me, it's it's and and sometimes I've I've seen some of the posts you talk about, and I do feel like they're sometimes presented as this sort of mutually exclusive idea of, like, well, either you believe in your customers or you're all focused on your competition and you're wasting your time with that. And to me, it's not a an either or kind of thing. You need to understand both.
And and like you said, you need to know the positioning of your of your competition. You need to understand where the openings are and and where you fit in to that space. And as we're thinking about the value that our customers need, we're trying to think about how do we where do we achieve that on a really high level, and where do we create the most divergence from from other things they're considering? And it's that combination ultimately that is kind of at the heart of the positioning that for the business. And and then the last piece of that, again, that sort of three three point process is the offering.
So then once we figure out your customer your customers, your competition, then we really think about, okay. Now what is your offer, and how does that align with the things we know your customers care about and and where you where you can stand out the most? So that's that's, again, that's kind of a high level view of how we think about it. Do you do you guys have a a similar kind of connection of of those things?
Mark Evans: Yeah. It's similar. It's interesting the the the order that you put it in because I usually start with the with the product or offering to get a sense of what do you do and what are the biggest benefits. Then I I focus on customers' competition. Mhmm.
And then I boil down the ocean because you've got all this information, and you've gotta make sense of it. And, eventually, then you go to testing. One thing I did wanna ask you about is when you are looking for that point of differentiation, whether it's being unique or or being different or being better, how big does that differentiation need to be? One of the views of positioning is that I need to be dramatically different from the competition, so I stand apart. Does it have to be that big, or can it be relatively small so that you have enough of a point of difference that you can rally around it and say, hey.
We're different from everybody else even in a small way.
Clay Ostrom: Yeah. It's a good question. I guess I would say, optimally, you wanna be as far apart as possible. I sort of I almost think about the competitive landscape as laying over a map on your customer's brain. And it's sort of like, well, how far apart is your flag from the flag of your competitors?
And the further apart they are, I think the more likely it is to stand out as a unique piece of information in their mind, and they'll they'll be more likely to remember it. The closer they are together, the more likely they are to blend together and maybe even kind of get used interchangeably. I do think it is important to find those areas of separation. Now it doesn't mean everything you do is going to be have that kind of separation. There's a lot of points of value where you probably are gonna be overlapped with your competitors, and that's totally fine.
It's just finding those if you have maybe 10 points of value that your customers care about, what are two where you can really create a big separation? And I'll just say I'll give you a really quick example of this. We were working with a a company, just in this past six to twelve months, and they they they have a a business where they make Turkish towels, beach towels. It's a commodity space. It's it's a space that's just filled with companies who are making similar types of products.
In their case, specifically focusing on Turkish beach towels, there's a big market leader called SandCloud. If you've ever heard of them or or run across them in Instagram, they've grown quite a bit. We were really trying to figure out how do we not just stand out, but really separate ourselves from SandCloud. And SandCloud's whole positioning is really built mostly around high quality but variety. They have a million different styles that you can pick from, whatever your personality is, and they've got partnerships with now lots of big IP companies, dis like, Disneys and and all those kinds of things.
And the company we're working with is much smaller, growing quickly. So when we were thinking about their positioning, we we really thought about two things. So one was the size of their towels. So we did customer research. We found that size in in the towel category, size really matters.
People really want a big luxurious feeling towel. I think that's something we can all kind of relate to. And their our our, clients' towels, were about 20% bigger than almost all of the other companies, all the other competitors' standard towels. So that was one big advantage. And then the other one was while SandCloud is worried about doing a million different designs for every occasion, our client had a very classic, single color type design, and and it's a classic Turkish, beach towel design.
If you've ever seen those, it's kinda one color. It's got tassels. It's got some basic stripes that go across it. But they have a lot of different colors, but it's very classic. It's very it looks very elegant.
It looks like something you could put in your bathroom and be proud of, but also take it to the beach or take it on a trip. Very long story short, that's what we built the positioning around was this very clean, elegant, modern style, meaning we weren't leaning into variety, like their biggest competitor, and and size. And and those were the things we built it around. And we felt like those were things that we could get people to remember about the brand. Again, very long story, but just trying to highlight the idea that there's lots of things that your customers will care about.
But if you can find a couple where you really stand out, you can hopefully be remembered.
Mark Evans: That's really interesting because it demonstrates the value of positioning and how it doesn't necessarily have to be the biggest difference in the entire world. I mean, the simply the fact that a towel was 20% bigger than than the competition in and of itself is that's kinda interesting, I guess. But if it allows the brand to stand out, then that's super important. So thank you for for sharing that insight because I think it brings all the theory that we're talking about to life. One thing that I did wanna talk to you about is after you've gone through the positioning process, you've looked at yourself and the competition, and you've got a real sense of the fact that your towels are 20 bigger than the competition.
What are the deliverables? A lot of companies will say, well, what do I get? I'm paying you all this money. You're you're going away. You're doing all these these things.
You're doing competitive research. You're spending a lot of time with with key stakeholders. What are you gonna give me? Is it a big document full of all the things I should think about? Is it simply a way of thinking?
Is it stuff that I could, I don't know, use for my marketing sales? What is the end deliverable that says to the CFO or the CMO, okay. You paid us all this money, and here's this thing. What is this thing?
Clay Ostrom: I know. I know. It really is the the million dollar question. And for us, it's it's a mix. So it's again, we go through this very in-depth process together.
So there's in my mind, I don't think this is what necessarily customers would latch on to necessarily as, like, this is the real value. But in my mind, a big part of the value is the process. It's going through it. Taking the time, taking a few weeks to think about this stuff on a deep level, obviously, also taking the time to do some research and talk to your customers and all those things. But but it's the process.
It's the giving yourself some space, some dedicated space to think about this stuff and not just, again, go through and kind of check the box of what we've always done. So that's part of it. But at the end, yes, there is a distilled down document or a book, a guidebook that comes out of this that that crystallizes all of these really important findings and ideas that we've had together. We also do a lot of work around messaging. So that's, to me, one of the most important outputs of this is that core messaging.
And I wouldn't call it a full narrative in terms of how we work, but but the story essentially of the brand. Because, again, that's gonna be coming through in really everything you do. Every piece of marketing you do, the first sales call that salespeople have with clients, that pitch that they're that they're talking about, that they're telling them has to embody those ideas. Again, it's prioritizing the points within the positioning. It's messaging examples.
It's the story that's gonna be told by salespeople. And we also again, I know we're we're really focused on positioning in this conversation when we do work with brands. We're also thinking about what does that position translate into from a visual perspective, and how do we communicate this in other ways beyond just the messaging. But those are kind of the core outputs for us. Do you do you guys have any other specific deliverables that
Mark Evans: No. I would say that the fact that you identified the process as one of the key deliverables is is I I was very happy to hear that because I think that that is actually the key deliverable. Because as you say, it you don't get a chance to do serious naval gazing very often because companies are so busy doing tactical execution and looking beyond the horizon and looking at their data that they don't have time to think and reflect on the brand and the value delivered. And I've run into situations, one recently, in which I'm in the midst of with this the chief revenue officer and the CEO. We're developing the story, and we highlighted the positioning, but it's not finished.
It's not polished yet. But the CRO is super excited, and he starts going to conferences and starts telling the story even before the the engagement isn't done. And he's saying this is resonating. It's working. Like, he's he's AB testing it on the fly.
I think that reflects the fact that as you go through the process, things surface and they resonate and executives get very excited. The other side of it is the idea of taking value propositions or brand positioning statements that you've developed or, you know, even brand promises that you've put together, having that appear in the public in the wild to on your website, on your about page, on your social media profiles, on your one pagers or your sales tax. Is that what you're talking about when it comes to taking position and moving into the messaging world?
Clay Ostrom: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. We we do often put it in the context of we we will literally say to clients, think about this as the headline on your website because I think for modern businesses, the the website is still the the typically, the number one touch point for people. It may not be the first touch point.
You might run into campaigns and social content and all that good stuff, but the first place they're gonna come to to learn more is still gonna be the website. So I think it's it's definitely about that. But I really loved what you're talking about with those those conversations that people are having, that that C Suite people or whoever the leaders are of a company are having with other people to test out the position, to test out the the message and the idea of it and seeing how it resonates with people. I I do think that's that's often where the fur the first the first real test happen is is with those real life conversations. And those are super important.
I'm sure you've done it a million times getting on a first call with a client, and you're kind of pitching them about at least giving some general idea of what you do and why you're different. And and are they just uh-huh. Or are they are they smiling? Are they leaning in? Are they listening?
Are they responding to that in some way? And that qualitative feedback is super valuable. I think that's a it's a great signal for things are are working.
Mark Evans: So the $64,000 question is after you've gone your through your positioning process and you develop your messaging and you feel good about the work that you've done and the client's excited because they've got a new story, then how do you and how do the client quantify the ROI of the work that you've done? At the end of the day, it's all about, am I getting value for money? Is this gonna move the needle for the business? Because, otherwise, it's just positioning for the sake of positioning. Just like a lot of companies write content for the sake of content.
So how do you measure or how does your client measure the success of your work?
Clay Ostrom: Yeah. That's a great question. And I I wanna I'll I'll say something. I'll I'll keep my answer brief, and then I wanna hear what your conversations with the CRO are are like to hear what the expectations are with with some of these people. But it's sort of the reflection of what we talked about at the beginning of, well, where do you see symptoms?
So what's the natural improvement that you would see as a result of improving your messaging, improving your story, improving your pitch, improving, again, from our perspective, even sort of the look and feel, the visuals of of what you're communicating. I mean, there's a there's lots of little tactical things we could talk about. We could talk about lots of different metrics from a website perspective. Are people spending more time on your site? Are they digging into the site more?
Is is awareness of your brand growing? Because now people have a way to tell other people about what you do in a succinct way, which is a really valuable part of this process is are you equipping your customers to repeat the story to other people in a way that is easy. I think that's another great signal that you've got a strong position is, can someone not just remember it, but can they retell it to other people? And, ideally, that's to other potential customers, but sometimes that's the the maybe that's the marketing lead who has to tell the CRO and the CEO and the the other c people why this is valuable and why they need to why we need to shift things. They need to tell a convincing story too about it.
So I think it's all of those things. Again, shortening of sales cycles. At the end of the day, it's improving revenue, but but those things take time. It's not like a it's not like launching an ad campaign with just instant results. I think it's it's something that is a little bit of a slower burn.
So setting those expectations is part of it too. So, again, I I wanna throw it back to you. I'm curious what what you hear from the other side, what they want.
Mark Evans: I think one of the biggest challenges with positioning and trying to demonstrate the the effectiveness of your work is some of it is quantifiable and but it may not be there there may not be a direct correlation between we develop positioning and here are the results we're gonna get right away. Because as you say, it takes time to demonstrate whether bounce rates have gone down on the website or whether there's more brand awareness or sales cycles have been reduced or or retention rates are better. All that just takes time to percolate and to see if it actually has an impact. So in some sense, it's quantifiable. In some sense, it's not.
It's it's could be very anecdotal. It's the way that you feel about your story. The salesman feels like he's got a much better, sharper story that resonates. Yeah. And a lot of it comes back to what I call leap of faith marketing.
Because if we're gonna go off on a slightly different direction, it's very hard in the marketing world to drive attribution. Direct attribution is is becoming increasingly challenging. So even if you're doing ad campaigns, you don't know whether it's the ad campaign that's working or something else. It comes back to the work that we do with positioning is that is that, yes, it could be positioning or it could be something else, but it's all part of this big marketing mix. And I think at the end of the day, it comes down to, at least in my view, is does the CMO, does the CFO, does the CEO feel that they've got much better story?
A story that they feel resonates. And if they says, yes. This is it, then in that sense, that's that's ROI. That's success. But we live in a data driven world in which people want to say, if I do x, y will happen, and that's that's the biggest challenge that we run into.
Clay Ostrom: Yeah. I I totally agree, though. I think the the confidence in the story has just far reaching tentacles across the entire company because it really shifts how everyone potentially, how everyone can feel about what we're talking about, what we're trying to tell people about, the story we're trying to convey to people. And and as we all know, especially when it comes to sales, confidence is such a key part of it. And if you come across with a certain level of confidence and energy around that because you know that this is a really great clear concept and you see it resonating with people over and over, your sales will improve as a result of that.
And, again, some of it is the positioning itself, and some of it is the adjacent energy of knowing you have a good position and being able to tell a a compelling story to people. And so, yeah, I unfortunately, confidence doesn't get put down in our deliverable list. It probably and maybe it should be, honestly. We we do talk about it certainly, but but, yeah, I think when the budget's being approved, I think if you came to the CFO and said, you're gonna be so much more confident, I think they'd probably laugh in your face. But it's the truth.
It really is the truth. When everybody's united around a position and a story like that, it makes a huge difference. We were just again, just a quick quick aside. Like, we I was just working with a company. They're in the IT space and working with their marketing lead.
And in working through some of the customer research we did and the positioning work, she felt so much more empowered to be able to tell a compelling story to their customers. And, again, that can go so far because we're not not everyone is the owner or the founder of a business. There's a lot of people who are just being driven by the internal story or an attachment to the company in some way. Obviously, also, salaries are dependent on these things as well. But but if you can get someone really excited about telling that story, it it's gonna come through in so many different ways, I think.
Mark Evans: One final question is how often should positioning be reviewed? As you mentioned earlier, it's not a set up, forget it kind of process. It's more about drawing a line in the sand and then revisiting positioning on a quarterly basis, half year, annual. When you're working with clients, what do you tell them in terms of, yes, we're good for now, but you should revisit this thing in what period of time? And how do they go about doing that?
Clay Ostrom: Yeah. The last thing you wanna do is end an engagement by saying, don't hold your breath on this. We're gonna have to revisit this, really soon. But but, yeah, I think I think some of it depends on the maturity of the business because I think if you're much earlier on, I think you do benefit from checking in more frequently. I think that's probably just kind of a natural insight.
But so I think if if you're early on and you're still trying to find your footing, you haven't totally nailed that product market fit yet, I think checking in every three months is probably a good idea because that gives you enough time to test things out, get some actual feedback, qualitative and quantitative, and be able to say, okay. We were right about these things. We were a little off about this. Here's where we could try some tweaks to do our next iteration. I think if you're a more mature business and you have a a pretty strong footing in your market, I think I could see it being maybe every six months.
I still think it should be more than once a year no matter what just to kind of check-in. And if nothing else, just reaffirm that we're we're still on track, that that this that this stuff is working. And and, again, check the data, check the the confidence level of people who've been delivering it. I think it's a it's at least a twice a year kind of thing, but I think if you're younger, if you're earlier, it's a frequent check-in kind of thing. Would you would you agree with that?
Mark Evans: Yeah. I think that your approach is is the right one. I think a lot of companies think that, okay. I've done this. Check.
Now I can go on to the next thing. Got my story down, but these stories change. Markets change. I mean, last year, it was all about acquisition and growth, and now this year, it's about productivity and efficiency. Same product, but customers are looking for different things, and your positioning needs to change to reflect that.
Yep. One final final question is where can people learn more about you and Map and Fire?
Clay Ostrom: Yeah. Yeah. The well, the the main spot is our website. So mapandfire.com is is the main spot, and we've got a whole bunch of great resources on there about positioning and lots and lots of other stuff related to brand strategy and marketing. I'm a big believer in sharing what we do and how we do it pretty openly.
So if you even if you don't wanna engage with us, you can probably go there and get a get some value out of it, hopefully. But, yeah, there and been posting lot more on LinkedIn. I know I know your presence on LinkedIn. I feel like that's becoming a more important part of our our connection points with people. But, yeah, I would love to connect with anybody who found this interesting or wants to chat more.
Mark Evans: Well, thanks, Clay, for the great insight. I felt like it was two positioning geeks sort of nerding out at each other for
Clay Ostrom: Nothing at all with that.
Mark Evans: Now. Nothing wrong with that. Hopefully, other people will understand our enthusiasm and the fact that we're willing to get into the nitty gritty to talk about the importance of positioning and why it matters and why companies need to have clear and powerful positioning if they're gonna stand out in ultra competitive marketplaces. If your position is off, then it's hard to stand out from the crowd, and you'll struggle for reasons that you think are have everything to do with tactics but really have to do with your customer story. It's such a important piece of work, but we just need to convince the world that they need to care about it as much as we do.
Clay Ostrom: I agree. I agree. And I am happy to geek out about it anytime. So thanks for having me.
Mark Evans: Thanks for listening to another episode of Marketing Spark. If you enjoyed the conversation, subscribe via Apple Podcast, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app, and share via social media. To learn more about how I work with b b SaaS companies as a fractional CMO and strategic adviser and positioning and messaging development, email Mark@MarkEvans.ca or connect with me on LinkedIn. I'll talk to you soon.
