The three steps to marketing that attract buyers like iron filing to a magnet are picking your Niche, Positioning and Messaging.
Your Niche influences your Positioning, which then influences your Messaging.
Niche 🎯
Your Niche is a description of WHO you're selling to, the specific PROBLEM(S) they have and the WHAT of your solution.
EXAMPLE: Operations managers at mid-sized supply chain companies in the iron ore industry + Who need help managing their communication with purchasing agents around the world + an API that integrates directly into Microsoft Teams and Slack
(Let's call our solution "Minerva")
Positioning 📕
Positioning takes the descriptive nature of the Niche, and packages it into a compelling, high-level marketing angle you communicate to your target audience of what it can OVERALL do for them and summed up in one or two sentences.
EXAMPLE: Minerva gives operations managers in the iron ore mining industry the ability to simply manage dozens of complex text, video and audio communications with third-party purchasing agents around the world using their existing internal tools
Messaging 📣
Messaging includes the specific feature-related benefit(s) of your product and is derived from your Positioning.
In other words, it's the specific benefits embedded within your high-level Positioning.
EXAMPLES:
Message #1: Minerva simplifies long, back-and-forth conversations by organizing them in individual threads, which means your team can ultimately handle a greater volume of conversations at the same time
Message #2: Minerva integrates directly into your existing Microsoft Teams or Slack account which means you save subscription costs and onboarding expenses normally associated with the introduction of new tools
Message #3: Minerva visually tracks the real-time movement and paperwork status of your iron ore shipments so that you can easily align conversations with purchasing agents as the shipments get unloaded at various global ports.
How do you know if your Niching, Positioning and Messaging are working?
Very easy - the most definitive measure is if people are paying you. And the more dialed in each of the three elements are, the more frequently and/or larger your individual sales are.