Marketing class in session—Today’s topic: positioning

Today has been a productive “thinking” day for me.

With that I mean, I figured out most (if not all) of the marketing for my new upcoming non-fiction book I’ll be self-publishing on Amazon (and should release in the next one or two weeks).

More specifically, I figured out the positioning of my book.

Positioning.

Such a fun, yet powerful, and often spooky word to many people who aren’t quite sure how to take on the challenge of “positioning” their offer in the market.

But it doesn’t have to be scary at all.

All positioning really boils down to is painting your offer in such a way that it’ll interest your target customer.

To do this you need to answer a few questions:

Who are you targeting?

What do they desire (go deep)?

What problems do they face?

You’ll have to do a bit of research to answer these questions, but that’s the way of life.

After you’ve found some answers to those questions, simply combine them and approach your product from an angle that encompasses your findings.

Example:

(this was part of my brainstorming, but I ended up not going with this angle for a few reasons)

I have a book focused on “How to enjoy the writing process”. That’s boring. Nobody’s going to buy it framed like that.

So let’s position it.

Who will I sell it to? Freelance writers with children (they’re known to always be working long hours under tight deadlines)

What do they desire? To work fewer hours so they can spend time with their children

What problems do they face? They have so much BORING writing to do it’s absolute hell to get through it all and they never have any motivation to write about some bullshit topics they can’t give a rat’s ass about.

Combine all of this into an angle so my product becomes the perfect solution:

Free up more of your time to spend with your children by learning how to truly enjoy the writing process, no matter what you’re writing about, or who you’re writing it for so you’re always full of motivation and excitement, so much so that your fingers start writing on their own the moment you sit down and they don’t stop until you're done… leading you to write more and better stuff in less than half the time it usually takes to complete all of your tasks.

Now tell me.

Which one would sell better, this one or the generic “How to enjoy the writing process”.

I can’t overstate how incredibly important developing this skill is.

So here’s what we’ll do today.

(an exercise)

You send me a short summary of your offer and how you want to market it (read: the positioning/angle you chose) and I’ll tell you whether it’s good or needs more refinement.

Simply hit reply and let me know.