Every company has an Optimum Positioning Opportunity (O.P.O.). The opportunity for the company to claim a unique strategic position that they can own in the mind of their customers and prospects.

It is the position that will differentiate you from your competitors and be compelling and appealing to the people you want to reach. It is the strategic position upon which you base your brand platform and therefore will influence all of your marketing communications, your company’s culture and organization.

To be truly effective, a company’s O.P.O. must address the following three areas:

1. What can you offer or promise
2. That will appeal to and resonate with your customers and prospects
3. That your competitors either can not or have not yet claimed

You reach your O.P.O. through a discovery process that encompasses three spheres of factors that affect your business:

1. Looking within the business itself-its products and services, its culture and organization, its policies and practices
2. Looking at the customers and prospects-who they are, who they aren’t, how they decide, what is impacting them and their decisions
3. Looking at the competition and the marketplace-who are the competitors, by product, market segment, geography, and what is happening in the overall market that is impacting the business

This discovery process leads to an area of overlap that addresses those points that enable you to identify that singular and unique promise that will differentiate you and motivate your customers and prospects.

Every company has an O.P.O. Moreover, you do not have to be unique to own a relevant, unique and compelling position around which you can build your brand. A number of years ago a gasoline company claimed they were the gasoline with octane and positioned themselves as the gasoline with pep and will improve your car’s performance. What they did not say was that all gasoline has octane.

Don’t settle for “me too” strategic positions that are neither differentiating nor compelling. Build your brand around a unique strategic position-your O.P.O.

Every company has one.

What is yours?