Small Business Book Review - Ries and Trout on Positioning

Positioning is both the name of a book and a crucial marketing idea first articulated over 30 years ago by Al Ries and Jack Trout. Since then the book has been revised and slightly updated, and both authors have gone on to write other successful marketing books, both as a team and separately.

Positioning is not the same as brand. In the book’s preface, Jack Trout defines Positioning this way: "It’s how you differentiate your brand in the minds of your customers and prospects."

Any of you familiar with the work of Michael Porter on competitive strategy and advantage know that engaging in a differentiation strategy is one successful way for a business to succeed. Then you also know that if your company pursues a differentiation strategy instead of a cost leadership strategy, there can be--and often are--multiple competitors enjoying healthy products. This is especially good news for small business.

Why? Because most small businesses won’t be thecost leader in their industry, but can still enjoy healthy profits by pursuing a differentiation strategy.

The carefully considered use of the ideas in Positioning can lead to small business marketing success but only if the marketer pays attention to the lessons Ries and Trout are attempting to teach.

So, why should your small business be concerned with this whole concept of positioning, anyway? If Ries and Trout’s theory is correct, then your business is already positioned in your customer’s mind whether you want it to be or not. So, the secret to successful marketing here is to use your current position to your small business marketing advantage.

One of the book’s key insights is that it is extremely difficult to change your position with any type of head-on assault. Ries and Trout use numerous examples of giant corporations that have spent millions and millions of dollars trying to radically adjust their position in the mind of their prospects. Most failed. Throwing advertising money at a target audience just typically isn’t sufficient to change a position in the consumer mind.

Well, if it doesn’t work for a big business with millions, how is it going to work for you and your small business?

For most of us in small business, the reality is that we aren’t market leaders. We’re followers. We compete in a market where the competition looks a little too much like us. Our products or services are pretty much the same as the competitors. We might gain a slight technological edge with some new machine or method, but sooner or later some well-financed competitor steps into our market and our technological advantage oh-so-quickly slips away. How many of you have invested heavily on a production solution, and discovered that the competition found a way to match your move quicker than you would have ever thought they could?

Chapter Seven is only a scant eight pages, but its focus is completely on the "follower" business. This is the chapter with the first-rate advice to "look for the hole" in your competitive market. For the small business owner, who must skinny through on a very limited marketing budget, this is good news because it’s often the breakthrough strategic campaign that beats the massive advertising campaign.

The book is chock-full of other great marketing ideas, too. There are tips on naming your company or product, how far you can extend your brand, and several interesting case studies. Positioning really is a classic, and that’s one reason it has stood the ultimate test of time—it’s still stocked in the marketing sections of bookstores more than thirty years since its initial release.

Remember: People (customers and employees) + Package (your Face to the Customer) + Brand (who you are) = Marketing Success.

© 2006 Marketing Hawks