I recently downloaded a positioning roadmap that I thought was really well done.

It walks through competitive analysis, ICP, differentiators, brand personality, market category and brand story before ending with a one-page positioning declaration.

But when I got to the end, I had a big question:

What do I do and say now?

Because now someone has to write the homepage, build the sales deck, write the emails and ads. Someone has to decide what you’re going to talk about again and again until people start associating that idea with you.

I saw this recently with a client who has spent decades studying how organizations get dramatically better at getting things done. He’s an accomplished author, consultant and speaker. He has tremendous credibility in the space.

We could have positioned him around organizational transformation. That would be accurate.

But organizations aren’t really looking for “organizational transformation.” They put their trust in leaders who can help them get better results.

That distinction gave us something much more useful to say:

Why can some leaders get dramatically more stuff done than others with essentially the same people, technology and resources?

Now we have a point of view we can create from.

Another example is a smart thermostat company I work with.

The product has lots of impressive things to talk about: remote monitoring, diagnostics, a great touchscreen and an integrated cellular connection.

But the HVAC contractors they sell to are thinking about a different problem.

They spend a ton of money acquiring homeowners and have very few effective ways to maintain those relationships. That’s why they try to talk you into HVAC maintenance plans, which are very manual and have high cancellation rates.

Armed with that knowledge and gap, now we can say that the thermostat helps contractors stay connected to homeowners and provide value throughout the year. Essentially, it’s a smarter maintenance plan and a great brand story to launch from.

These come back to the same idea:

Founders spend a lot of time thinking about their products.
Customers spend a lot of time thinking about their own frustrations.
Great brand storytelling connects those two worlds.

For my own business, that statement has become exactly that. I can write from it. I can evaluate client messaging against it. I can tell stories about clients, sales decks and websites through the same lens.

Positioning determines the territory.
Messaging gives you something to say about it.

And the best messaging gets you down to a differentiated point of view you can pound home.

Your website, sales deck, emails, ads and thought leadership should all come from that same place.

They can explore different problems, tell different stories and emphasize different benefits. But they’re all offshoots of the same core idea.

That’s how you build recognition for what you believe and what you do.