Find Your Competitive Advantage: Differentiation, Positioning & Messaging
Who It’s For
Marketers and owners of professional services firms of all sizes.
Course Overview
Most professional services firms are indistinguishable from their competitors. In fact, lack of differentiation is one of the toughest challenges stakeholders and marketers struggle with today.
In this course, you’ll learn how to uncover your firm’s true differentiators so that you can give buyers a reason to pick you out of the crowd and choose you. You will craft a positioning statement that articulates exactly where you fit in the marketplace. And you will learn how to develop messages that overcome key objections and persuade prospects to buy your services.
This course comes with downloadable worksheets, step-by-step instructions and many real-world-inspired examples. You can even work through the process yourself as you go. And at points in the process where we’ve seen clients struggle, we provide expert guidance to get you through.
Meet the Instructor
Lee Frederiksen, PhD
Lee left a tenured professorship at Virginia Tech to pursue a career as a serial entrepreneur. Managing Partner and Research Director at Hinge, he is considered a leading authority on high-growth professional services marketing.
What You’ll Learn
- How to identify your key audiences
- How to find out what your clients, prospects and staff really think about your firm
- How to research your competitors
- How to mine your research for true differentiators
- How to write an effective positioning statement
- How to develop your elevator pitch
- How to develop useful messaging for business development and marketing
- How to put all of these tools to practical use
Watch a sample segment:
Syllabus
Class 1: Know Your Audience
When Do You Need to Think About Positioning?
Know Your Audiences
Research Strategies
How to Collect Your Data
How to Review Competitors
Class 2: Identify Your Differentiators
How to Mine Your Data for Potential Differentiators
How to Evaluate and Select Differentiators
How to Articulate Your Differentiators
Real-World Examples of Strong and Weak Differentiators
Class 3: Positioning
What Is Positioning?
What Is a Positioning Statement?
How to Write a Positioniong Statement
Real-World Examples of Strong and Weak Differentiators
Class 4: Messaging
How to Turn Your Positioning into Compelling Messages
How to Craft a Simple But Effective Elevator Pitch
What is Messaging Architecture?
How to Write Your Messaging Architecture
How to Use Messaging in the Real World
Additional Materials:
Audience and Research Worksheet
Differentiators Worksheet
Positioning Statement Worksheet
Messaging Architecture Worksheet