054 | How Positioning Helps HealthTech Companies Survive the Marketing Doldrums | Mark O'Brien, Newfangled | Studio CMO - a podcast by Golden Spiral, Shaping Technology Marketing

Does Your Positioning Set You Up for Greater Success?

Positioning is the art of articulating your unique value proposition in such a way that you begin a conversation with a potential customer. Both Golden Spiral and Newfangled are experts at helping companies define their market positioning for greater success. On this edition of Studio CMO, Newfangled's CEO, Mark O'Brien, looks at the pitfalls and benefits of good positioning, how companies win, and the single most important factor to marketing after you release your positioning—patience.  

Show Notes

Positioning is the foundation, because without it, you're going to waste so much money. — Mark O’Brien

Are You Addressing the Wrong Audience?

Are you speaking to your peers? Stop trying to impress your competition. Awards are a waste of time and money. Your peers and competitors don’t grow your business. Your audience does. Are you speaking to your internal audience? Your employees know what you do and what you make. So, changing the language around may sound unique to them but means the same thing. The only audience that matters is the buyer audience.

The Curse of the Technical Founder

Golden Spiral sees this curse time and time again. A company is so in love with their technology—their chassis—they can’t talk about anything else. They don’t even talk about the problem that originally inspired the creation of the technology. Often, when a company’s marketing is focused on the technology, the marketing actually talks over the heads of the customer. Companies can be so bound up with the minutiae that they miss the big picture. John Farkas recently published an article about technical founders.

Positioning must be focused on a real problem that real people have. It must start a conversation. —John Farkas

The Three Stages of Marketing

Mark O’Brien outlined the three basic stages marketing plans go through. Energy You’re spending the time, energy, and money to create a marketing strategy based on your research. Everyone is excited and can’t wait to see what happens. Marketing Launch Time slows down. It’s worse than watching grass grow. How long will it take? What is the TTR—time to result? During this stage, only those who stay on the plan, remain disciplined to follow the strategy, and continue to believe will win. Success or Death This is the fun stage. If you’ve stayed committed to the strategy, you will see results and can throw more fuel to grow the results. If you gave up during the doldrums, you’ll feel the death and wonder why you started in the first place.

The Power of Focus

Mark offered two powerful examples of focus and how they apply to marketing. The Gaja Winery After a long and storied history, Angelo Gaja inherited his family winery. After he studied the finances, the business, and the actual assets—vines and nutrients—in the ground, he ripped out and destroyed more than half of the vineyard. Many thought he was crazy or hatching an insurance scheme. Instead, he maximized the wine. They produce much less, but it is much higher quality, better tasting, and produces more profit for the winery.  The Hedgehog Concept Jim Collins in his famed book, Good to Great, outlines a way of thinking, “What do we do better than anyone else?”

Two Approaches to Positioning

Positioning is the art of articulating your unique value proposition in such a way that you begin a conversation with a potential customer. Mark O’Brien outlined two successful approaches. Exclusive Positioning “We do X for Y.” When you encounter a company with exclusive positioning, you know within five seconds on any page on their website whether or not you are a fit for their product or service. They exclude all others outside of their focus. Open Positioning This is an 80% approach. When visiting a website, you know what the company does and what sets it apart, but the company is purposefully vague about the niches they serve. If visitors feel like they might fit, they can continue in the stream. Most companies who pursue this approach, change to exclusive after about 18 months.

Books Mentioned On This Episode

American Dirt Good to Great

About Our Guest

Mark O’Brien is a forward thinker helping clients see a better future for themselves while helping them take risks to pursue their vision. He now serves as CEO of Newfangled, a digital marketing agency that gets leaders out of their own way to develop the programs needed to grow their businesses. He grew up in the ranks at Newfangled first as a developer and then as a sales executive.

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