Why Is It So Hard to Take Your Own Strategic Advice?
I’ve spent much of my career helping companies figure out how they should position themselves, where they can differentiate and what customers need to hear.
Then I had to do it for my own business.
And I realized I wasn’t always taking my own advice.
I wanted to talk about everything I could do. Every industry I’d worked in. Every problem I could solve. All the experience that made me qualified.
I hadn’t clearly defined who I was trying to reach. I wasn’t articulating why someone should choose me, what problem I solved or the results I could help create simply enough.
I had some things right. But I also had some of the same blind spots I’d spent years helping companies uncover.
Knowing Better Doesn't Mean Doing Better
I don’t think this is unique to marketers.
Companies do it all the time.
They try to be relevant to too many customers because narrowing the audience feels like turning away opportunity.
They describe everything their product or service can do instead of clearly communicating the problem it solves.
They lead with features, capabilities and credentials because those are the things they know best.
And they struggle to articulate why a customer should choose them over the alternatives because, internally, the answer feels obvious.
From inside the business, all of it feels important.
From the customer’s perspective, it can feel like noise.
Clarity Requires Choices
That was probably the biggest reminder for me.
Experience gives you knowledge. But it doesn’t automatically give you objectivity.
When you’re close to a business, you know all the nuance. You understand how the pieces fit together. You know the history behind decisions and why certain capabilities matter.
Your customer doesn’t.
And that’s where strategy gets uncomfortable.
It’s much easier to add another audience than decide which customer matters most.
It’s easier to list ten capabilities than decide which problem you want to be known for solving.
It’s easier to describe everything that makes the company impressive than distill why any of it matters to the customer.
And it’s easier to keep refining the words than confront the possibility that the underlying positioning isn’t clear enough yet.
Whether you’re positioning a global brand, a growth-stage company or your own business, the challenge is surprisingly similar.
The goal isn’t to communicate everything that’s true about you. It’s to make what matters most unmistakably clear.
Five Questions Worth Asking
If you’re wondering whether you’re too close to your own business to see it clearly, these are good questions to start with:
Who are we really trying to reach?
Not everyone who could buy from you. Who is the customer you’re best positioned to serve?
What problem are we known for solving?
Could your leadership team answer that consistently and succinctly?
Why should a customer choose us?
Not a list of capabilities. What’s the compelling reason to choose you over the alternatives?
What result do we create?
Can a prospective customer quickly understand what will be different or better because they chose you?
Does the way we describe ourselves match the way our customers describe the problem?
This is often where internal language and customer reality start to diverge.
These sound like simple questions.
They aren’t.
I learned that firsthand.
Is Your Business Harder to Explain Than It Should Be?
Sometimes the hardest problems to diagnose are the ones you’re closest to.
I work with CEOs and growth-stage companies to identify what’s holding growth back and determine what needs to change before adding more marketing.
If you’re trying to figure out what’s getting in the way of your next stage of growth, let’s talk.
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