Branding

Your Buyer Has Ten Tabs Open

When everyone sounds the same... how do you stand out from the crowd?

A buyer finds you through a search, a post, or an AI answer, and your page is one of ten open next to each other. Every tab promises quality and service. You get a few seconds, and nobody spends them weighing features.

They want to know one thing: is this for someone like me? Positioning is your answer, and it has to land before they close the tab.

What is positioning

The market files you somewhere whether you choose it or not. If you don’t choose, you get filed under the commodity version of your category, and every comparison starts there. Positioning is choosing the comparison yourself: who you serve, what they’re stuck with, and why you’re the one to fix it.

A real position fits in one sentence a customer can repeat to a friend. “We help family-owned dental practices fill their schedule without discounting” is one. “We provide innovative marketing solutions” fits ten thousand companies.

Here is the test. If a competitor could paste your headline onto their site without changing a word, you haven’t positioned yourself yet.

A position also says who you’re not for. Narrowing feels like losing work. It also lets the right buyer say “that’s me” in five seconds.

Why it matters more online

No salesperson is standing there to rescue a vague first impression. The page does the job alone, and visitors skim and leave.

Strong work doesn’t speak for itself online. The market can’t reward what it can’t recognize. Search engines and AI assistants pull from sources that are specific, so when someone asks for the best option for a particular situation, the business described as the answer to that situation gets named. A generalist gets skipped. A specialist gets named.

Every post, page, and review that repeats the same idea also makes the next one stronger. Mixed messages do the opposite.

Three things to do this week

Write your sentence. We help [specific buyer] who are stuck with [specific frustration] by [what you do that a competitor couldn’t claim]. Some buyers should read it and say “that’s exactly me.” Others should say “that’s not me.” If nobody says the second one, keep narrowing.

Read your first screen like a stranger. Within five seconds, can you tell who the page is for and what they’re stuck with? If not, fix that before you touch anything else.

Say it the same way everywhere. Your bio, About page, profiles, and email signature. It will bore you long before the market notices it.

So here’s your assignment: write the sentence, then tell us what it says.

– Seth Goldstein & Brian Griffiths

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Curated By Brian Griffiths

That's It For This Week! Keep Rocking It!

-Seth

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