How Can We Tell Whether Our Positioning Is Genuinely Distinctive?

Ask five hospitality businesses what makes them different and you may hear five versions of the same answer: exceptional service, passionate people, quality and a memorable experience. None of those ambitions is objectionable. Together they create a market in which everybody claims to be special using interchangeable language.

Positioning is genuinely distinctive when the intended customer can explain a relevant reason to choose the business over alternatives, and the organisation can demonstrate that difference in the experience. A claim that exists only in the brand presentation has not passed that test.

Remove the identifying marks

Take your main proposition and remove the name, logo and location. Put it beside comparable statements from several alternatives. Ask people in the target audience to explain what each business appears to offer and whom it seems designed for. Do not coach them towards your preferred answer.

This is a qualitative diagnostic, not a statistically representative study. Its value lies in exposing confusion you can investigate. If people cannot distinguish the propositions, ask which details would change their decision. You may discover that a feature leadership considers minor is commercially useful, while a heavily promoted claim creates little interest.

Avoid asking whether people “like” the positioning. People can like several brands without choosing any of them. Ask what they would choose for a defined occasion, what they would expect and what would make the offer unsuitable. A proposition becomes clearer when it acknowledges the customers and occasions it does not serve particularly well.

Demand evidence from the operation

For each claimed difference, identify where a customer would encounter proof. If the promise is an unhurried spa day, examine arrival, consultation, changing space and the transition after treatment. A generous description cannot compensate for a schedule that makes guests feel processed.

If the promise is an event venue that reduces organiser workload, look at the brief, the response to changes and the handover between sales and delivery. The evidence is the work the organiser no longer has to do, not the number of times the website uses “stress-free”.

Make the test inconvenient enough to be meaningful. Examine a busy period, a new employee and an exception. A difference that depends on the founder being present is an asset with a fragile delivery system. Strengthening that system may be more valuable than rewriting the message.

Distinctiveness has a commercial boundary

Being unusual is insufficient. A restaurant can introduce a complicated ordering ritual that nobody else offers and still make the experience worse. The useful difference must matter to a defined customer, be credible before purchase and be deliverable at an acceptable cost.

Test a revised proposition with an appropriate comparison. Keep the audience and offer conditions as similar as possible, then examine enquiry quality, booking conversion and contribution. A more distinctive message may attract fewer enquiries while improving fit. That can be progress, provided the business understands which customers it intends to serve.

Listen for the customer's own language after the visit. Can they explain the reason they chose you and whether the experience confirmed it? Their description does not have to match your copy. It should reveal a recognisable value that makes your business easier to recommend for a particular need.

Your positioning is working when customers recognise a worthwhile difference and your people know which decisions protect it. Use FUSIONscore to explore whether those parts of the business support one another before spending more to amplify the message.

Further reading: Why competitors are not your strategy.

Illustrative stock photograph. Photo: MART PRODUCTION via Pexels. Image licence.