The Chocolate Positioning Problem

So many CEOs & marketers I speak to struggle to articulate positioning — what it means, how they’re positioned, and the impact the wrong positioning can have on a business. When I’m on stage, one of the things I talk about is the chocolate positioning problem. This will help you understand the power of positioning. Let me explain… 

Positioning is fundamentally where your market places you next to your competition. 

It shapes everything commercially: your lead quality, the amount you’re trusted, the premium you can command, and whether you get shopped around. 

Let me show you what I mean — there are 3 chocolate bars below. 

All three would taste good. 

But the Green & Black's is about 5x the price of the supermarket own-brand. 

How? 

It’s all in the wrapper. The premium positioning and brand around the chocolate. 

The chocolate is your content — the stuff you post. 

The wrapper is your positioning — how your content is perceived. 

You need both working together. 

Because if you're posting surface-level takes and poor-quality images, that is your wrapper — and it's telling the market you're own-brand. That you don't have deep expertise. That you're not trusted. That you're not the leader in your industry. 

People decide in a split second from how it looks and how it lands, and then choose whether to read on. Poor content. Cheap wrapper. Own-brand positioning. 

So how do you build premium positioning? 

Great quality industry-leading content. Premium look & feel. An original point of view drawn from what you've actually done. Specifics that show you’re a practitioner — real numbers, the mechanism, proof you've operated at the level you're talking about 

But you also want to create a category-of-one by leaning into what makes you unique: a personal brand. When people buy into you — your thinking, your name, how you see things — there's no like-for-like option. 

They can't get you anywhere else. There's nothing to compare you to, so there's no price to argue about. 

Premium positioning gets you to the top of the shelf and lets you charge more for it. A personal brand gets you off the shelf entirely. 

In other news: 

We’ve also just published this article on the difference between “content” and “thought leadership” — as well as sharing our approach to content that drives buyers. 

And this mini step-by-step guide on driving high-ACV deals with senior decision-makers through LinkedIn.