You have a great offer. You know it’s good. Your customers know it’s good. But something’s not clicking – growth has stalled, the pipeline’s sluggish, or conversations end up being about price. The temptation is to fix the marketing. New website, better campaigns, sharper creative.

But what if your marketing’s not the problem?

Most of the businesses I work with don’t come to me saying ‘we need positioning.’ They come with symptoms. Here are six of the most common – and if three or more sound familiar, the issue probably isn't your marketing. It's what's underneath it.

1. You can’t explain what makes you different

Someone asks what you do. You answer. Their eyes glaze over.

Maybe you deliver a long and complex explanation. Same result.

Perhaps you give a solid answer, but it could describe half your competitors.

Or – the most common version I see – you give a different answer every time, depending on who’s asking and what mood you're in.

I think it’s fair to say, if the people running the business can’t say what makes it different in one clear, compelling sentence, nobody else stands a chance.

2. Your customers love you. New prospects don’t get it.

Your existing customers are loyal, enthusiastic, even evangelical. But when you try to win new ones, it’s hard work. The penny doesn’t drop. Demos and sales calls take too long to land. You find yourself over-explaining.

This is one of the most telling signs. It means your customers have discovered your value through experience – but that value isn’t being communicated upfront. The good news is that your best customers are often holding the key to unlocking it. How they describe you is usually closer to your real positioning than how you describe yourself.

3. Every conversation drifts to price

Not because you’re expensive. Because your prospect can’t see clearly what they’ll be paying more for. When the only visible difference between you and the alternatives is cost, cost is what people negotiate on.

Strong positioning takes price off the table – not by ignoring it, but by making the comparison irrelevant. Take the phenomenon that is Nespresso: nobody compares the (high) price per gram against supermarket coffee. Why? Nespresso has repositioned the comparison entirely. They’ve convinced you that you’re not buying ground coffee. You’re replacing a daily barista brew.

4. You’re spending on marketing but the pipeline’s not moving

Campaign content is going out. The creative looks good. But leads aren’t converting. You can't work out why.

Nine times out of ten, this isn’t a media problem or a creative problem – it’s a message problem. If the core proposition isn’t clear and compelling, better targeting and prettier ads won’t fix it. You’re turning up the volume on a message that isn’t landing.

5. Your own people tell different stories

Sales describe you one way. The website says something else. The CEO’s pitch is a third version entirely. They're all telling a version of the truth. But without an agreed foundation, every touchpoint is slightly different. The cumulative effect is confusion.

You’d be surprised how often I sit in on a leadership meeting and hear three different descriptions of what the company actually does. If the people inside the building can’t agree, imagine what it sounds like from the outside.

6. The market has moved and your story hasn’t

New competitors. New technology. Changed customer expectations. You’ve scaled up. Something’s changed. And, what got you here isn’t getting you there – but you’re still telling the same story because it used to work.

This is the only sign on this list that comes from outside rather than inside. But it’s often the trigger for addressing all the others. A market shift forces the question you’ve been avoiding: do we actually know what we stand for now?

So, what are you going to do about it?

If you recognised your business in any of these, that’s not a marketing problem. It’s a positioning problem. And it’s fixable.

Positioning isn’t about slogans or spin. It’s about getting clear on what makes you different, why the right people should care, and finding the words that make it stick. Get that right, and everything downstream – your messaging, your marketing, your sales conversations – gets easier.

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