OK, once you are convinced you need to wave your Brand Banner, the next step is to determine where in the mind of the customer you are positioned relative to your competition. Remember, its the combination of Brand, Package and People marketing elements that lead to small business marketing success. But a strong Brand is the foundation.

First, lets look at the competition. You know your competitorsprobably better than you think you do. Make yourself a very small chart. You can make it as a table in Microsoft Word, or in Excel. You can even rough it out on a piece of notebook paper. Make four columns, with the following column headings:

• Competitor
• Estimated Market Share
• #1 Reason People Buy from Them
• #2 Reason People Buy from Them

Underneath the column headings, list your top three competitors, and briefly fill in the relevant information in the column headings for each competitor.

We recommend that you do not go out to your customers with a survey to gather this information. You might ask a few key Achievers for help if youre stuck, but most small business owners know their competition well enough to fill in this simple table in their sleep.

Second, lets look at the invisible competition. If a customer doesnt choose you or the competition, then where does that customer go? Where does she spend her money? For example, restaurants competitors often arent each other, but Dinner and a DVD at home. Your visible competitors are usually easy to find: you just go to the yellow pages, and there they are. But its those substitute products or services that we want you to take notice of, right now.

Write down your two top invisible competitors underneath the little competitor analysis table.

Third, lets uncover where your company is positioned in the mind of your customers or prospects, right now. Are you in the middle of that pack of competitors, or do you fill a really unique spot? Just jot down one or two sentences comparing your position in relation to your visible and invisible competition.

So youve written down three different categories relating to your customers: your top three competitors, your invisible competition, and your company.

Fourth, its time to Brainstorm just how you can improve your marketing message to take advantage of your current position. You will want to clearly appeal to your customers, but stay in line with where you are already positioned. Remember in an earlier article the analogy of Brand as a sailboat on a lake.

This is one time youll want to use your employees to help you discover creative and unique ideas. Involve those Achievers in a creative planning session. Solitude can and will bring you insight, but you need the eyes and especially ears of your best staff. Achievers listen to customers; your current customers will often make a little, off-hand comment that can clue you in to exactly where you are positioned, relative to your competition.

Note that we arent trying to establish features and benefits here. This exercise isnt designed to be a training course for your salespeople on how to answer specific objections. That may be a secondary benefit you gain from this exercise, but it isnt our main purpose.

Instead, we are trying to help plant your Brand Banner in the mind of your prospects. Its very tough to go head-to-head with any of your competition; it is so easy to end up as a middle-of-the-pack brand in the mind of your prospects. And, when you are herded into the middle of the pack you are much more vulnerable to price attacks and other competitive moves by your competitors. It is much better to pick a weakness in several competitors armor, and find a strength you can use to exploit against their weakness. You can then build your marketing around this and differentiate yourself from your competition. It is just this technique that is strongly advocated in the marketing classic by Ries and Trout, Positioning.

For example: lets say you know from earlier research into your customer base that your customers perceive you as a quality, on-time provider. You can use these brand attributes to fight against a competitor that solely markets itself as a price leader. Dont try and go head to head on price unless you are seriously ready to cut your margins and are ready for a war fought down in the attrition trenches. It is better to stress what sets you apart from the competition and use your promotions to emphasize that over and over to your customers and prospects.

Building a brand is not an overnight job. For most small business, the brand is already built--there is a customer base that chooses to buy from your company already. The job isnt so much to build a brand but build on the brand; discovering where you are positioned relative to actual and invisible competitors is a critical first step in the process.

2006 Marketing Hawks