And, it’s not a mission statement.
by Bruce W. Marcus
Professional Services Marketing 3.0
There is no great mystique to the marketing concept of positioning. While it’s not as simple as some would make it seem, nor as complex as others would have you believe, it’s still very real.
More for CPA Trendlines PRO members: Who’s Better at Marketing? • Lawyers or CPAs? • Even a Random Disaster Can Be Controlled with Risk Management • Managing Risk in Client Relations • Your Clients Love You? What If You’re Wrong? • The Three Degrees of Risk • Four Essential Habits for Building Client Trust • The Nine Hallmarks of a Marketing Culture • The Four Cornerstones to Building A Marketing Culture • Getting the Client is Only Half the Battle • Practice Development: It’s Not Rocket Science • Nine Fundamentals for a Healthy Marketing Culture in an Accounting Firm •
Like so many words used in marketing, positioning has come to be shorthand for some ideas that have come a long way in the pursuit of sound marketing practice. First popularized by Ries and Trout in their 1981 book, Positioning, the concept took a basic advertising practice and codified it in a way that made it possible for other marketers to think differently about approaches to the market.
CPA Trendlines research has uncovered the startling fact of the wide disparity between how accounting firm management perceives their own performance and how their clients see their performance. (Join the survey; get the results.)
The basic idea of positioning is simple. Or at least, simple to state.
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