Are you positioning from a place of fear?

It can be frightening to do something different. When it’s done right, changing positioning (or even doubling down on exisiting positioning) often feels scary. Especially for a startup, good positioning is usually quite narrow, and that can feel incredibly limiting, even if it’s the right move that will allow the company to meet short-term sales goals, build buzz and then create a snowball effect that starts with a small market but expands to a much larger one.

Getting that narrow is uncomfortable. In addition, good positioning always means doing and saying things that other people aren’t doing and saying. And while people talk about how important it is to be differentiated, in reality it can be hard to put it into practice.

A while back, I was talking with the head of marketing at a cybersecurity company. One of their investors had recommended they speak with me, and the head of marketing who took the call wasn’t super excited to talk. After a couple of minutes, it was clear why. The founders resisted any attempts to make the company different from their competitors. If they did what everyone else in the market was doing, the head of marketing explained, their investors couldn’t get angry with them. So even though this head of marketing knew that it was a problem, there was zero chance he’d convince them to do anything but copy everyone else in the market.

It’s easy for us, with distance, to listen to that story and see how ridiculous it is. Why would these founders risk their startup’s success because they’re scared of being different? But the truth is that I see startups like this all the time. Sometimes companies position themselves identically as their competitors out of inexperience or inability to get enough distance to do anything else. But sometimes it’s out of fear.

You’ve already stuck out your neck by starting a company. Tight, differentiated positioning can feel like sticking your neck out, too. But it also makes it much easier for your startup to succeed. And that’s what you ultimately want, right? So don’t let fear prevent you from owning positioning that is truly differentiated.