A simple positioning framework for agencies and consultants

Cheesecake Factory is not great.

It's basically one step up from Lean Cuisine, and yet somehow you're going to spend $40 a person for dinner— especially crazy when you see a family of five there and realize they're gonna drop $200.

The other thing that blows my mind about them is that their menu has something like 200 items on it! It's literally a book - not a piece of paper like most restaurants… a spiral-bound book that's a quarter of an inch thick!

And when I look at a lot of agencies and consultants’ websites, I get the same vibe:

“We make websites, and also do brand strategy. And motion graphics, and content strategy. Oh and also marketing!”

You can probably see the problem here:

Your potential clients won’t know what to do with you.

Right or wrong, people want you to fit neatly into some existing box in their mental model. If you don't fit into one, they're not going to do the positioning work on your behalf to figure out exactly how you might be able to help them— they're just going to move on.

Generally speaking, I think agencies should have ONE core offer that super-serves ONE specific client and focus ALL their marketing around that.

Here's the simple framework I like to use:

The important thing to note here is that the first three pieces of this are all about using FAMILIAR language— things that your potential clients will understand immediately and intuitively.

Don’t make them guess about what you do!

There's definitely a place for differentiation, but this is not it— you want a very simple elevator pitch that you can rattle off and they'll just nod, because they understand and they're ready to hear more:

❌ Strategic UX buildouts that translate vision into velocity

👌 We make websites for apartment complexes

If you're having trouble summing up everything you do in one sentence, that's probably a sign that you’re trying to do too much.

Which brings me to my next point:

It's almost always better to focus on being truly exceptional at a small number of things than spreading yourself thin by being okay at many things.

That's a lot of words to say that you should specialize:

→ Easier to market yourself because selling one thing is easier than selling ten things

→ Clients will look at you as an expert rather than just a pair of hands

→ You can charge a higher rate, which is how you make more money without increasing headcount

And realistically, no agency is actually going to be great at 10 things— or even 3 things, if we’re being honest.

For example, when I was working on P&G products like Swiffer, Febreze, Tide, etc we would oftentimes end up collaborating with their other agencies— I won’t name names because I don't want to throw anyone under the bus, but I’m referring to all the giant branding and advertising agencies that work for huge companies like Wendy’s, BP, Walmart, etc.

All of them have a massive list of capabilities, because their clients need them to be a one-stop shop. And make no mistake, they're mediocre at all of those things. But when Walmart hands them a $20M budget, they have the capacity to handle it— their advantage is scale.

And you're not going to beat them at that game. You can't compete on breadth of services, but you CAN compete by being better.

You want to be the agency or consultant that your clients go to because they're frustrated with the mediocre work they're getting from their giant agency. They're looking for fresh ideas and innovation, and THAT’S your way in— being the rebels to the big agency’s death star.

→ So here’s the takeaway:

Find the one thing where you have an unfair advantage over all the other agencies/consultants. The thing you can do better than all of them because of your background, your skill set, your network, whatever it is.

Double down on that, and find a way to describe it that's immediately intuitive to your potential clients.

You don't want to be like Cheesecake Factory with 200 items on the menu.

You want to be that taco stand where there's always a line around the block that only makes 3 things (and all of them are 🔥).

PS - If you like my emails, reply to this and say hi! I don’t have any room for new clients right now so I have nothing to sell you, but I always like talking with people.