Having worked with over 420 companies on messaging, the most common feedback I get is, as the Head of Business Development at a global law firm said, “You’ve managed to do in a week what we’ve been trying to do for 18 months”.
The reason my methods work when so many other approaches don’t is that, in 20 years of doing this, I've found positioning overlooks a fundamental piece of the puzzle.
I believe it's that magical combination where the human and emotional meet the strategy. It’s essential to weave the two together to get messaging that feels like you, that you can own and that your ideal clients will actually buy into and act on.
So many positioning statements I see lack emotion, and that makes them intangible. There's nothing to grab hold of, they don't tell a story or paint a picture. They leave you cold.
And if they don’t make you feel anything, it will fall flat with clients too.
The answer is to take your standard “we do X for Y” value proposition, but make it feel real, ask:
- How does my client really want to feel?
- What do they desperately want to stop feeling?
- What’s the worst case scenario they’d never say out loud but would pay anything to prevent?
- What’s the secret hope that would make them whisper to themselves, “God, I hope this works”?
Weave your answers together to create your emotional value proposition (your EVP) and try leading with that instead.
