Positioning is the oldest idea in modern marketing and still the least practised, because doing it properly requires refusing revenue. Al Ries and Jack Trout introduced the term in a three-part series in Advertising Age in 1972 and developed it in Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind in 1981. Their argument was that in an overcommunicated market you cannot install a new idea in someone’s head, you can only attach yourself to one already in there.
The basic approach of positioning is not to create something new and different, but to manipulate what’s already up there in the mind, to retie the connections that already exist.
What positioning is not
It is not a slogan, a feature list, or a description of your quality. Quality claims are structurally empty because nobody claims the opposite. It is also not the same as your differentiator: the differentiator is the fact, positioning is the space that fact lets you occupy relative to the alternatives a buyer is actually considering. If you do not know what those alternatives are, including "do nothing" and "keep doing it in-house", you are not positioning, you are describing.
Where a real differentiator comes from
| Axis | Example of a claim | Test it has to survive |
|---|---|---|
| Audience | Only serves dental practices | Would a competitor advertise serving everyone? Yes. Passes. |
| Specialisation | Migrations only, no new builds | Would a competitor advertise doing both? Yes. Passes. |
| Method | Fixed price, no hourly billing | Would a competitor advertise time and materials? Yes. Passes. |
| Values | Refuses gambling and payday-lending clients | Would a competitor take them? Yes. Passes. |
| Outcome | Cuts month-end close to five days | Is it measurable and provable on request? Must be, or it fails. |
| Quality | “Committed to excellence” | Would any competitor claim the opposite? No. Fails. |
That inversion test is the whole discipline in one move. A position that no rational competitor would claim the reverse of carries no information, and therefore cannot influence a choice. Everything that survives inversion involves giving something up, which is exactly why it works.
Why price is the weakest axis for a small business
Price positioning is defensible only for whoever has the lowest cost structure, and in almost every category that is not the small firm. Competing on price also selects for the customers most willing to leave, which raises acquisition cost permanently. If you are going to use price at all, use it structurally rather than as a discount: a fixed fee where everyone else bills hourly is a method position that happens to be expressed in money, and it is defensible because copying it requires the competitor to change how they operate.
Write it, then stress it
Format: for [audience] who [need], [brand] is the [category] that [difference], because [reason to believe]. The category slot matters more than people expect, because it sets the comparison set the buyer will use. Naming yourself into a crowded category means competing on its established criteria. Naming a narrower one changes the criteria, which is the cheapest advantage available to a small firm.
Then stress-test it with three questions. Can you name three enquiry types this position requires you to decline? Could a competitor copy the reason to believe within a quarter? Does the sentence contain a fact a customer could verify, or only an adjective? Failing any one sends you back to the differentiator.
Positioning is a claim on a word
The practical test Ries and Trout proposed still holds: what single word or phrase do you want to own in your buyer’s head, and is it currently unoccupied? If the word is already firmly owned by an incumbent, attacking it directly is the most expensive strategy available. Finding the adjacent word nobody has taken is cheaper, more defensible, and far more likely to survive contact with a marketing budget the size of yours.
Key takeaways
- Positioning as Ries and Trout framed it in 1972 works with associations already in the buyer’s head rather than installing new ones.
- Apply the inversion test: if no competitor would claim the opposite, the claim carries no information.
- The category you name sets the comparison criteria. A narrower category is the cheapest advantage a small firm has.
- Price is the weakest axis unless it is structural, such as fixed fees against an hourly-billing field.
- Positions collapse through accepted exceptions during slow months, so set the refusal criteria and price floor in advance.
Keep reading
Sources
- Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, Al Ries and Jack Trout, McGraw-Hill (1981)
- Trout & Ries, including the 1972 Advertising Age series “The Positioning Era Cometh”, Wikipedia
- Branding
- Brand Strategy
Written by
Mara Whitfield
Brand Strategy Lead
Mara Whitfield leads brand strategy at ThisCom, helping small and medium businesses build distinctive brands and consistent digital presences that earn trust and stand out.
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