Perfect Your Positioning, Boost Your Online Sales - The Shopify Growth Show (#5)
I'm gonna fire hose you with examples right now. And the whole goal is to kind of flood your mind with examples of companies that have done this really well, that have nailed their positioning. Hi. I'm Jim Huffman and welcome to the Shopify Growth Show, where we dive into what's actually working to scale Shopify brands. Each episode, I talk to founders who've grown from idea to 7 or 8 figures, plus experts who share what's driving real results.
Speaker 1:And we're in the game too, pulling back the curtain to show what's really working. I hope you enjoy today's episode. Hello, everybody. Hope your week is going well. Today, wanna share something from a a live event that I did.
Speaker 1:This past week, I did a live event to an intimate group. It was kind of a lunch and learn. And the theme of it was perfect your positioning, boost online sales. So what does that mean? Basically, a lot of people focus on a lot of the wrong things on marketing.
Speaker 1:They're basically moving chairs around on the Titanic when what they should really be focusing on is dialing in their positioning. So we go through why your positioning might not be strong, and I go through two core frameworks you can use to get your positioning right. Specifically, one, why should customers care? What are they switching from to you? And then second, how do you speak their language?
Speaker 1:And so we go through those frameworks. I go through a bunch of examples of how some impressive brands have pulled it off. I even talked about what we did at Growthhead and Meet. So hope you enjoy the episode on positioning. And just so you know, this is a part of our growth marketing operating system.
Speaker 1:We're working on a product around what's blocking growth and this is just one part of it. So there'll be more to come with this series and with the lead up to the launch of this product hopefully by end of the year. But really hope you enjoy today's episode. So if we're gonna understand how your problem works, if we wanna understand what's blocking growth, let's break it down. So if you're not growing, I think it's one of three things.
Speaker 1:The first is your positioning. You might not have it dialed in. You might not have positioning that's so good that your top customers can say it to a friend and be pitch perfect. You might not be growing because traffic. You just don't have the volume to grow in an ROI positive way.
Speaker 1:You might have great positioning. You might have traffic coming in, but we don't know how to get them across the finish line. And so for me, with those three things, if I can understand what's working and not working there, that's how I can start to build a plan for how we can actually grow. We're not gonna do this today. This is something that we go through while we're doing this whole system, but it's essentially the scalability assessment to really diagnose, okay, what of these three categories is really the main reason why we aren't growing?
Speaker 1:But we are gonna do part of it today, and it is positioning. With positioning, I like to think through a couple things. Right? And it's really around these questions. So this might be a little painful as you guys will answer these questions and you can do it to yourself.
Speaker 1:I won't pick on anybody unless you allow me to, but ask these three questions to see how your positioning is. So here's the first one. Do you get new customers or do you win deals if you're a B2B company because of your point of differentiation? Meaning people are switching to you from a competitor or they're choosing you when they're doing comparison shopping because of that reason. The second one, can customers clearly articulate your value proposition?
Speaker 1:So here's the question. If I could get on the phone with your top 15 customers and I said, give me the pitch on your product or service and you have 15 words, would they nail it? Would they say what you want them to say? The third one. This one's big.
Speaker 1:Are you a must have or are you a nice to have product or service? Another way to think about it is, are you a painkiller or are you a vitamin? And, we wanna be solving real problems. And by the way, these problems don't have to be like curing a disease. They can be nuanced problems that are still very real.
Speaker 1:Do you have urgency, and do you have scarcity around your product? Do you truly have limited slots, limited inventory, or is there true urgency for a reason? Because if you can do these four things, you you get that black belt in positioning and it makes everything else easier. The other thing to think about with that is I'm very guilty of this where I wanna say everything that we do, but the truth is sometimes you just need that one thing that is that tip of the spear to get them in the door. So what is that feature or benefit you could lead with?
Speaker 1:And then the rest follows. Because it's hard to remember things that are more than a sound bite. But, yeah, that's a great point, Sarah. And I was fortunate enough to meet Sarah yesterday, actually. Okay.
Speaker 1:Thank you guys for the feedback and for the comments coming in. And if you want, you can post the comments to everybody or send them directly to me. Either are are are totally fine. Okay. So I have a next slide that might hurt a little bit, and so I wanna apologize in advance.
Speaker 1:But let's say you went through these three questions and you didn't do well. Salinas had point of differentiation is something we struggle with. Yes. And we'll get into that. How do you compete in in the sea of sameness?
Speaker 1:So if we didn't do well with these three things, at the end of the day, this is what it means. Unfortunately, nobody cares. And I know that you're talking to a person right now where I've had some really epically bad startup ideas where I'd even pitch it to my mom, and she's like, so how are the kids? But good news. If these three things are things you are struggling with, here's how we come out of it.
Speaker 1:And I have two frameworks for you that I wanna hit on. So just so you know, I absolutely love frameworks. I think it's the stickiest way to learn and to remember. So the first one is your pitch formula. What we really need to understand is why customers should care your product exist.
Speaker 1:So that's first. Like, why should they care? The second thing is if we can actually get people to care why you exist and why you're better than a competitor, here's the next thing. We need to learn how to speak to customers in their language. I'm not talking do they speak English or Spanish.
Speaker 1:I'm talking what language do they use? Do they speak in features and benefits and problems and use case? So let's dive into these two frameworks to help you kind of unblock your positioning so you can come out of this and start to build, like, an amazing go to market strategy and and unblock growth. Okay. So here's step one.
Speaker 1:Why customers should care you even exist? You've probably seen some different formulas like this, and this is one that I'm a huge fan of, and and I'll talk about why. It's because of this very last comment here. And it's unlike competing alternatives, what's our point of differentiation? And Johnny, yeah, this is something we've talked a bunch with your brand is really trying to understand a point of differentiation when you're in a category with a lot of people.
Speaker 1:But the licensing deals that you guys can get on your products, that one is pretty special in the designs. So here's the formula just to break it down. For target customers who need a specific opportunity, we are this product in this category, and here's the key benefit. Unlike competing companies or services, we are different for this reason. So let me make a few callouts on this formula to do this.
Speaker 1:The first thing, your target persona, the more specific, the better. Here's the thing. You're gonna be afraid to go too narrow. The more specific, the better. I will push you that you probably can't be too niche.
Speaker 1:David c Baker says, as long as there's 2,000 people, you will be able to nail it on a niche. The other big thing is the benefit and how it aligns with the opportunity or problem they solve. Notice how it's benefit, not features. It needs to be what do they get out of this, which is pretty obvious. But here's the big one.
Speaker 1:What are we competing with? So here's a mistake that I've made that you might make. A lot of times we're not competing with direct competitors. You're actually competing with a category. You're competing with indifference.
Speaker 1:You're competing with attention. And so what are we really up against with this? So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna pick on our direct to consumer brand, Neat, and how we really leaned into this formula to build our go to market strategy. So this is our our formula we did for NEET. And one thing that I wanna call out is a couple things.
Speaker 1:We went pretty specific where we went after guys, specifically bigger guys that run hot, that sweat a lot. And there's a huge opportunity in menopause and with females, but we out of the gate, we we wanted to start here because we're kinda marketing to ourselves. The other thing is, you know, what's the real benefit? And instead of getting fancy, it's very simple. Sweat marks, pit stains, back sweat.
Speaker 1:That's what people care about. That's the problem we wanna solve. So here's the thing. I could have competed with other sweat proof brands. I could have been like, hey, Thompson Tees.
Speaker 1:We're coming for you. But that is a knife fight in a barrel. Right? That that's not a huge opportunity. I wanna go after regular T shirts.
Speaker 1:Why? It's a category one and two. I know I can win. And we're not saying throw away all your regular cotton T shirts, use ours. It's no.
Speaker 1:It's like, keep those shirts. But unlike those, you know, we can actually hide sweat with our intellectual property that was actually made for the military that we're now using for regular shirts, help you look confident and sharp. And so this this was key where all of our marketing needs to be around this point of differentiation. And what I'm gonna do in a second is show you how this came to life on our ads, on our website, and allowed us to actually sell it over the product in in in triple sales. Okay.
Speaker 1:So this is the formula that I want you to to come up with. So we need to get this dialed in. Point of differentiation, why people should care. Alright. Let's go to the next step.
Speaker 1:Once we know why people should care, the next question is, okay, how do we speak to someone? I think I know how to position it, but how do I speak to them? So first, let's talk about the people you need to speak to, and I'm gonna keep it simple. Let's say there are three personas. And then as we kind of build upon that, one thing that we start to understand is we have three personas we wanna speak to.
Speaker 1:You have the informed buyer. This is the person that is actually already informed. They're educated on your product or category, and they're the person with a spreadsheet that's comparing your product to five others. So how do we speak to them? It's simple.
Speaker 1:We nerd out with them. We speak about features. We get into the technical details, the nuance. These are early adopters. And a lot of times, if you're at an early stage, the this is what you build your company on the back of.
Speaker 1:But as we grow in scale, we're going to a second persona. This is the afflicted person, also known as the fast follower. So they are not informed, but they have a problem and they are desperate to solve it. And so how do we speak to them? We meet them where they're at.
Speaker 1:We speak to them in a problem solution format. Right? And so this is one where we we can't nerd out on the details. They're not there yet, but we can understand their pain. As we go from the afflicted, there's a third persona.
Speaker 1:And by the way, this is the persona that as you go from early adopters to fast followers to now the masses, if you crack the code on this persona, this is how you scale. This is where you get to that next round of funding. This is where you're going from 7 to 8 figures. And so the oblivious person, they are not informed. They have a problem.
Speaker 1:They don't know it. So how do we speak to the oblivious person? It's simple. We just need to get their attention. Right?
Speaker 1:It's get their attention long enough to care to where you can educate them on what you do. So informed, afflicted, oblivious, early adopters, fast followers, the masses. So if those are the three personas and we know how to speak to them on features, problem solution, and then attention, what does that look like? So what I wanna do now is I want to show you this in the wild of speaking to these three personas. So I'm gonna pick on now my growth agency.
Speaker 1:So our growth team, we we do a bunch of stuff. We do ads. We do conversion rate optimization. We have to use a lot of different language when talking to people. So I'm gonna show just one of our services, which is conversion rate optimization for consumer brands.
Speaker 1:And I'm gonna show how I would position it three different ways to these three personas. So let's start. The informed buyer. This person, they've got the spreadsheet. They're nerding out.
Speaker 1:They're comparing my agency to 20 other agencies. So how do I speak to them? Say, hey. We're a CRO agency that focuses on Shopify Plus stores and do upsell card abandonment campaigns. Like, oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. All these other CRO agencies, they're generalists. You guys special on Shopify Plus. Perfect. Okay.
Speaker 1:Because, again, they're nerding out. They're hitting on the features. Alright. Let's go to that second persona, the afflicted buyer. So remember, they're not informed, but they have a pain, and I wanna meet them where they're at.
Speaker 1:So here's how I would speak to them. Hey. Is your bad conversion rate killing your profitability? So a couple callouts here. This person, I'm I'm pouring salt in the wound of the pain so I can relate to them.
Speaker 1:But the other component is profitability. This person, a lot of time, it could be a business owner where they're not talking in the language of of ROAS. They're talking in profits. So that nuance is very key. Okay.
Speaker 1:So let's go to the third one, and this is the hardest one. But this is the one that if you can crack the code, it's real exciting because it allows you to scale. It's the oblivious person and it's all about getting their attention. So this is a little BuzzFeed style in the headline, but you get what I'm going for. Do you want to double your sales without spending $1 on ad spend?
Speaker 1:You're like, absolutely. I'm intrigued. Okay. Great. Let me tell you about conversion rate optimization.
Speaker 1:So notice how these three pitches are all for the exact same service. But because I'm able to understand that persona and person, I can speak to them differently. And how does that come to life? What does that look like? Well, it comes to life in the ad copy.
Speaker 1:It comes to life in the landing pages. It comes to life in the email drip campaigns based on the traffic source that it's coming in or based on the context we have from how they heard about us. So what I wanna do next is I love examples. I think that's also the best way to learn. So I'll apologize in advance, but I'm gonna fire hose you with examples right now.
Speaker 1:And the whole goal is to kind of flood your mind with examples of companies that have done this really well, that have nailed their positioning. I'm gonna show consumer examples. I'm gonna show b two b examples. Hopefully, this can help give you guys some inspiration, and then I'll even show our company, our agency, and our consumer brand what we've done differently. Okay.
Speaker 1:So let's dive in. This is Rocket Money. Previously, it was Truebill. And for them, I I love their messaging out of the gate because it wasn't about features. It wasn't about benefits.
Speaker 1:It was simply solving a problem on the back of a very clear use case. Get control over your subscriptions. We're all paying way too much money for these streaming services and apps that we signed up for, and I don't even know what I'm paying for anymore. This one use case, this one problem solution like SoundByte allowed them to end up getting acquired by Rocket Money because they nailed that from the start. A true kind of painkiller.
Speaker 1:Let's go to another painkiller, but one that is actually very nuanced. Again, this is Adam's shoes. They are in a crowded category. There are a bazillion shoe brands. How do you stand out?
Speaker 1:And this is right after Allbirds launches. It's like, oh my gosh. How many more shoes can we have? And so they really understood their point of differentiation. They don't sell shoes in half sizes, but in quarter sizes.
Speaker 1:And actually 70% of Americans, their feet are different sizes. So you need different size shoes for your left foot versus your right foot. So it was all about shoes that fit both of your feet. Notice how they're educating and talking about this Nuance problem and then giving the solution. So all of their campaigns were really pouring salt in the wound of that small Nuance problem and how they're the solution for it.
Speaker 1:Okay. Let's go to one that is features and use case. We'll go to the fintech category. This is Wealthfront. So they were launching a product, which is a high yield cash savings account, which normally you could put your money in Chase and make a very small fraction of a percent in the Chase savings account or Bank of America savings account.
Speaker 1:With the high yield cash savings account, you can make 3% or 5% depending on interest rates. So for them, like, okay. We need to be able to explain this feature, but in a way where we show, don't tell. And so for them, it was nerding out on this feature with this tool where it's like, hey, how much money is your savings account? $50.
Speaker 1:Perfect. You're making $50 with your bank right now with us. It's found money of additional thousand dollars. This simple, like, feature of what they have, but showcasing in a way where they can show not tell really brought awareness to this category where the they're the leaders in the space for it. Okay.
Speaker 1:Let's go to two others that you are probably very familiar with. We'll look at Warby Parker and Figma. The thing that I like about Warby Parker, they're in a crowded space. Their glasses are good, but not necessarily better. So they decided to win on customer service with their home try on program.
Speaker 1:Right? This is really what put them on the map. We've all kind of seen this one, but it's worth giving them a victory lap for for how strong that was. Five pairs in five days, a % free shipping both ways. Choose the one you like.
Speaker 1:Send the rest back. So this customer experience was huge for the day. Again, a lot of people are doing the home try on program now, but what is that new version of winning on customer experience? Especially with anybody that's trying to compete with products on Amazon, I'm seeing the wins come because of customer service and solving the problem of I don't wanna go to the glasses store to try on and find things. So convenience was huge.
Speaker 1:Let's look at Figma. Their product isn't necessarily better than that of Photoshop. However, the collaboration aspect was significantly better because it was real time collaborating with teams to put feedback as opposed to having a bazillion versions. So they initially win on having a better products. They win on it being a better work process product.
Speaker 1:So that's another thing to really understand the customer and the problem they have with these tools. Okay. I'll go two more. This is another one that I like with Spanx. So with Spanx, they had a problem.
Speaker 1:They were creating a category of shapewear that if their go to market strategy would have been features and benefits, it'd be really hard to get people's attention because it's like, I don't even know what shapewear is. So they had to really lean into the problem they solve and lean into attention. And they got to 8 figures literally on the back of two use cases. One is wearing pants and not wanting to show a panty line and wearing a dress without showing any any any roles or being self conscious of it. And so they leaned into educating people on this problem and also by entertaining people with these kind of cartoons, talking about the problem that they're solving.
Speaker 1:It's worth going back to some case studies on the they put on the early days to educate people on their category. Okay. The final one that I wanna hit on is Truvani. This is a protein powder. And to get their early adopters, these are not the ads that worked.
Speaker 1:The early adopters is about how much protein is in each scoop. Are these clean ingredients? Is it plant based? That's how they got the early adopters and the fast followers. But you know how they got the masses?
Speaker 1:It's by getting their attention to care long enough, thirty seconds, a minute, to then be educated about protein powder. So look at these ads. Protein that tastes like peanut butter cookies, that tastes like a banana split. Because people that see these ads are like, oh, yeah. I know.
Speaker 1:I should probably be learning more about protein, why it cares. Okay. You have my attention with these mouthwatering ads. Let me learn more. And again, there's been some really amazing case studies on the progression of their ads by persona, but these are the ones that work.
Speaker 1:So let me show you what we're doing with our agency with Growth HIT and then with our brand Neat to kind of pull this off. And by the way, at the end of this, if anyone's game, I'd love to pull up any websites you have to kind of do this live to give feedback. So but first, I'll pick on my own website. So this is GrowthHit, our growth agency. So we did a a redesign of our website, and here's the headline that I wrote, which by the way is horrible.
Speaker 1:Growth isn't a guessing game. I kinda put it in there as filler copy. The website went live, and we still had it. And guess what? The conversions weren't good.
Speaker 1:And I'm like, hey, do this for a living. I should probably be able to pull this off myself. So here's the thing. A lot of people that come to us, they aren't informed, but they have a problem. And so I know the language they speak because I do a lot of sales.
Speaker 1:And here's what I heard. They're like, I want a CRO team that'll pay for itself. And I want to turn my existing traffic into more sales. I hear that time and time again. So I was able to kind of like invert it where I took the copy of the problem customers have.
Speaker 1:And I turned that into my headline. And we've been able to get our cost per lead down from over $500 to a hundred and $50 on our our paid ads. And we're we're doing lots of iterations of this, but this was the big moment. Let's go to our other brand with Neat. This is the the company we acquired late last year.
Speaker 1:Neat, the sweat proof shirts. And here's the headline, nothing but Neat. I think we can all agree that's kind of a fluffy headline. It's like, what does that even mean? So for us, we have to get people to switch.
Speaker 1:We have to make people know our point of differentiation. That was number one. So look how aggressive we are. We're like, make the switch. Unlike your regular t shirts, ours hide sweat.
Speaker 1:So we're really talking about that use case and that problem we're solving. Like, no pit stains, no back sweat. And so this in addition to other things we did across the funnel, we got our conversion rate from point six to 3.8. And then more importantly, there's other things we've done. We got our average order value up from basically $50 to now a hundred and $11.
Speaker 1:But again, these small tweaks in positioning can have a huge impact. Literally, favorite CRO experiments are the ones where we just change the copy on a page, but it totally reframes the product or service in the eyes of the consumer. So hopefully that's helpful, but my goal is to kind of flood you with some ideas. But again, thank you guys so much for the time. This was a blast.
Speaker 1:I hope you all enjoy the rest of the week, and thank you for the time. Thank you for listening to the Shopify Growth Show. If you found this helpful, be sure to subscribe and leave a review. It helps other Shopify founders like you find the show. Want more Shopify advice?
Speaker 1:Sign up to the Shopify Growth Insider News letter by Growth It, where we break down the top five growth tactics every week. Remember, you're not in this alone. Building a Shopify brand is a grind, but you got this. Keep testing, keep scaling, and don't run out of larges on Black Friday like I did. Have a good one.