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Positioning is a very important concept for freelancers and consultants. In my mind, positioning has evolved to Something different than specialization. Positioning is picking your target market and identifying how you want to be known and recognized by that target market. That’s different from concepts we talk about often, like an expensive problem that people in your target market are experiencing the trigger or need that they have that you help them with. Or your specialization, the discipline that you practice, the area of expertise you have. So, for you, Nick, your specialization would be, let’s say, design and A-B testing and conversion rate optimization. Your positioning would be the target market you’re working with, e-commerce, and I completely blank you on the third one. We have positioning, we have special oh, an expensive problem would be, hey, how do I get more sales? How do we get more conversion? So together, they fit into Give you clarity on how to market your business, who you want to work with, who your best buyers are. But positioning in and of itself, Is understanding who you’re marketing to, who that target market is, and how you want to be recognized and known by that target market. Is there anything you’d add to that?

Yeah, it does. One aspect of positioning that I often think about is. You want to have it be resonant and coherent with what the client is experiencing and what the client is seeking. And oftentimes I’ll see positioning statements out in the wild that are not working for freelancers or consultants because They’re phrased in terms of, let’s say, inputs, what we’re putting in, what we’re doing, rather than outcomes or business outcomes that a company in your target market is searching for. And so It’s important to understand the difference between the thing that you’re doing. Hey, I’m doing, let’s say, e-b testing, or I’m doing outreach, or I’m doing search engine optimization. And the thing the client is actually hiring you to achieve. We want more conversions. We want more website traffic. We want to get in touch and maintain relationships with influencers. So, understanding that distinction. I think it is very, very important because if you’re marketing yourself based on the input, I’m going to build a website for you. People are only going to seek you out when they’ve already identified that that is the thing that they need. Instead, if you’re focused on the outcome, hey, we’re going to help you get more leads for your business. People could be way, way early in the process of figuring out what they want or what they need, but they know. Ah, we need more leads. How do we get more leads? And so, if you’re positioned around that expensive problem, that outcome they’re looking for in their mind, it’s easier for somebody to say, oh, you’re the person to help me get from where I am to where I want to be. And it honestly doesn’t matter sort of how our discipline plays into this, what we’re doing behind the scenes to help them achieve that. We might be doing the same thing we did pre-positioning. Hey, we’re going to build a website, we’re going to add some forms, we’re going to do some conversion rate optimization on here. but we aren’t focusing on the discipline as much as the outcome for the client, what they’re searching for, what they’re paying for, what they want to see happen in their business.

I would say I like to say no. I think that. The answer is yes, you could position yourself in such a way that there are literally no clients that meet that positioning or meet that definition of a target market. In actual, factual, real-world business, if you follow, let’s say, best practices or best principles here and start by saying, like, okay, Who are the different target markets out there? Who have I worked with in the past? Let me analyze that. Who do I want to work with? Okay, let me have some conversations with people. Let me understand what their needs are, what outcomes they’re looking for. Form a hypothesis based on What their needs are and what the market needs. You could refine down your positioning to something that’s very, very targeted and focused. Jonathan Stark and Philip Morgan both use the phrase laser-focused positioning statement. I think that. The more narrow you make your positioning statement and the more specific, the more beneficial it will be for you because it will signal to those people that match your positioning statement, your dream clients, your ideal clients. Hey, out of the sea of everyone, every consultant out there, I specialize in working with people like you. I might work with other people as well, but I specialize in working with people like you. The example I often give is, Somebody who says, well, I’m an e-commerce consultant, and somebody who says, oh, I’m a Shopify consultant. We could leave discipline aside for this example. But somebody who’s saying, well, I’m an e-commerce consultant, they’re going to get leads from WooCommerce people, from big commerce, from Etsy, from eBay, from all the different platforms. Somebody who’s saying specifically, I specialize in Shopify. I am a Shopify consultant. And I’ll share an example in a moment of how far down the rabbit hole we could actually take this. Somebody who’s saying I’m a Shopify consultant. Well, if somebody has a Shopify store and is searching for an e-commerce consultant, now they have a choice between somebody who’s saying, I’m a generalist e-commerce consultant. I help e-commerce stores. Well, not bad, decent, matches up with who I am. I’m an e-commerce store owner. Or somebody who’s saying, I specialize in helping Shopify businesses, XYZ, whatever that outcome is. If we’re a Shopify store owner, we look at that company and say, oh, wow. They work with companies exactly like mine. They work best with companies like mine. So, the more specialized we’re able to make ourselves, the more narrower we can define our target market, the easier it becomes to market ourselves. We no longer have to say, well, How do we reach our customers? We’re able to say, okay, we’ve exactly identified who our customers are. Now we’re able to ask the question of how we reach this specifically defined target market.

Could be some whale clients in there. Get out. It’s a peculiar industry, but there might be value there. I’m thinking of an early episode, or I was just reminded of an early episode of Philip Morgan’s Consulting Pipeline podcast, episode 16, when he talks with a Kenna Kote, I’m sure I’m butchering your last name, my apologies, about what it takes to grow a business in a tiny niche. Kenna started in a tiny weird niche, teaching people who make handmade soap how to do a better job of running their business. And that seems like. To be both narrow and specific and ridiculous and preposterous. How many people out there are running handmade soap businesses that need to do a better job of running their business? Well, obviously enough to support Kenna. So. How niche can you go? How specialized can you go? The answer might be, well, are you unable to find any communities or any examples of those types of clients. And if you’re unable to find any sort of signs of life for that target market or that positioning, That might be the signal that you’ve gone to specialize, but you might find some esoteric weird niche and say, okay, I’m going to be the big fish in this small pond, and I’m serving, you know, consultants who work with handmade soap business owners. And. Great, there’s enough out there to support me and my business. It becomes a crazy, radically narrow positioning, but for somebody that matches that positioning statement, for somebody that is in that target market. You suddenly are the only person or one of the few people saying, Yo, I work best with people like you, and it immediately develops that rapport.

Yeah, if your addressable market is six or seven businesses, well, you, in a sense, have made it easier for yourself. One of the areas that I see people struggle with the most is, hey, how do I build a leads list? How do I build a prospect list of people in this niche and get in touch with them and talk with them? Well, If your addressable market is seven companies, you know who the companies are. You could go on LinkedIn right now and be like, okay, I found the name and email address of the CEOs of each of them and start your outreach. By reducing the options, by reducing the scope of your target market, you actually make it easier to say, well, quick test. Does this person match this target market? Yes, no. Yes. Okay, great. I should get in touch with them. For a tiny, tiny niche, it becomes easier to do outreach and build those relationships and quickly reach a point of either validating or disproving your hypothesis about this being an addressable market.

Yeah. More and more I see positioning Less as like the defining thunderous, momentous move that you make in your business and more as a marketing experiment. It’s like saying, I’m going to test Facebook ads. Ah, Facebook ads didn’t work. Positioning should have that level of casualness to it. I’m going to test this positioning. I’m going to talk to 10 people in this market. I’m going to see if they actually have problems I can help with. Oh, they do. Great. Oh, they don’t. Great. I’ll test another market. It’s something that you could pick up, test, experiment with, change, adapt over time. You in no way are tied to your old positioning. You and I have both changed positioning multiple times, evolving from generalists. to specialists in different fields, changing the fields, changing what we specialize in. And our businesses do well. That I think is a natural part of the growth of a consultant or a freelancer. Identifying new markets, identifying new lines of business, moving into new markets and new lines of business, and adapting your positioning to better serve them. That really is a sign, I think, of a healthy, growing freelancing or consulting business. You are adapting over time. You are not remaining stagnant.