What actually happens in a positioning review

The phrase 'positioning review' sounds abstract until you are in one. In practice it is a structured look at a specific question: does the way you describe your business match the way the people you want to reach actually understand it? The gap between those two things is where most positioning problems live.

Week one: the audit ¶

The first week is about gathering material. That means your website, your sales emails, your proposals, your social profiles, and anything else you use to describe what you do. It also means looking at how three or four competitors describe themselves, because positioning is always relative.

The audit is not a judgment of quality. It is a map of what is currently being communicated, whether intentionally or not. Sometimes the most revealing thing is what is missing.

The competitor snapshots ¶

Three competitor snapshots does not mean a comprehensive market analysis. It means a close reading of how three businesses in your category describe their audience, their offer, and their difference. The goal is to find the language patterns that are common across the category, because those are the patterns you need to either use deliberately or deliberately avoid.

This part of the review often surprises clients. Seeing your own language next to a competitor's makes the similarities visible in a way that is hard to see when you are only looking at your own materials.

The revised positioning statement ¶

The deliverable is a revised positioning statement: one paragraph that describes who you are for, what you do, and why that matters to them. It is written to be used, not filed. You should be able to paste it into a proposal, a website, or an email introduction without editing.

The statement is accompanied by a short written explanation of the choices made, so you understand why each word is there and can make informed decisions if you want to change something later.

Positioning is not a one-time fix. But having a clear statement to start from makes every subsequent decision about language and audience easier to make.