Moving through our modern world is to be bombarded with input. It's fast, it's full, it's a lot. Our minds cope by generalizing and rushing over the details. It quickly sends all inputs that look sort of familiar into their known categories. There simply isn't time to carefully consider every possibility.
If you want to stand out with your company, you can't expect your customer to do the work to figure out what you're about. Even if they'd benefit just as much from doing business with you as you would. You need to help them see. You need to make it easy for them.
That means it needs to be clear what category you fall into. Who is it for; what do you solve; and how you are different from the ones they already know in that category. That's positioning.
This might seem simple, but loads of entrepreneurs struggle with this. Partly because it's scary to exclude some potential clients and the revenue that could come from them.
But it's also hard because any claim to be of a category, a type or a professional persona is a gross simplification of who you really are. This is especially hard for freelancers. Their product is themselves. Simplifying makes them feel misunderstood. They feel like they are much bigger than their persona. And they are.
So they use words that could mean anything because they feel they need to include both A and B. That's how you end up with copy that after reading you don't know what you just read.
Trying to communicate all that grandness isn't helpful to your client. By trying to be complete, you become vague. You put the work to sort through all your messaging to gain a clear picture of what you're about on them. And they won't. You'll be put on the pile of miscellaneous and quickly forgotten.
Rather than complete, keep it simple and interesting at first. Be quick to point out why your potential client should care. Once you've got contact, you can expand.
With Unchain the Tigers, Ingmar Creutzburg makes cities better by helping them uncover their brand and positioning and thus creating more connection between the city and their people. What's the area about, how can you bring that across and attract the people and behavior you envision. We talked about branding and categories; but also about looking with wonder and the importance of mentors.
