Positioning

Positioning: what is it?

Positioning is often confused with branding, which is a logo and a colour, or with a niche, which is who you serve. Positioning is the sentence a prospect could use to explain you to a friend. If nobody can produce that sentence, you have no position, and a coach with no position is compared on the only dimension left, which is price. The good news is that positioning costs nothing to change, because it is a decision rather than a purchase.

The four parts of a position

A usable position answers four questions in a way a stranger could repeat. Most coaching websites answer the first and skip the rest.

Positioning against alternatives, not competitors

A prospect is not choosing between you and another coach. They are choosing between you, another coach, a gym membership, a free program on YouTube, an app, and doing nothing at all. Doing nothing is usually the most popular option, which means your position has to argue against inertia before it argues against a rival.

That changes what you emphasize. "Cheaper than the other coach" is a weak position; "the reason your last three attempts stopped in week four, and what we do differently about it" speaks to the alternative that actually beats you most often.

Where positioning shows up

A position that only exists in your head is not a position. It has to be visible in every place a prospect meets you, and it has to say the same thing in all of them.

• Your social bio, in one line, naming who and what problem.
• The first sentence of your website or landing page.
• The name and description of your offers.
• The kind of content you publish, and just as importantly, what you refuse to publish.
• The testimonials you choose to show, which should be from the people you want more of.
• Your price, which is itself a positioning statement whether you intend it or not.

Price as positioning

Coaches underestimate how loudly price speaks. A rate far below the market says one of two things to a prospect: either they are inexperienced, or something is wrong with the offer. Neither helps. If you have positioned yourself as the specialist for a specific expensive problem, a bargain price actively contradicts the message, and prospects will notice the contradiction before they notice your qualifications.

This does not mean charge more for the sake of it. It means your price, your promise and your proof have to agree with each other. When they do not, prospects believe the price.

Positioning is also a filter, and that is the part coaches find uncomfortable. A position specific enough to be useful will actively repel people, and it is supposed to. The coach who says they help runners come back from injury loses the general fat loss enquiries and gains the ability to be the obvious answer for a smaller group. Trying to keep both is how a position dissolves back into a sentence nobody can repeat.