How to Create Your Mission Statement/Positioning Statement

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I had a really great time chatting with people this past week who took advantage of my quick 20 minute office hours opportunity. If you missed that, I'll likely be doing it again soon-ish, so please keep your eyes out—it'll be included in my newsletter exclusively, so sign up at the link above if you aren’t already on my weekly newsletter list.

One of the themes that I discovered talking to folks was that it's very hard to define what you do, who you do that thing for, and how you differentiate, and I've found myself sharing my quick formula for defining that a lot this week.

My method is one cobbled together from a bunch of sources, including a book I love, Nicely Said, and Jonathan Stark's XY positioning statement. I prefer Nicely Said's focus on positive differentiation instead of competition, and their emphasis on it as a mission statement instead of positioning (for me that's an important point of divergence—mission statements have bigger meaning in my eyes), but I like Jonathan's preciseness in his approach.

The way I formulate this is,

"I do A for B. I'm different because of C."

So, for example, I'd say about us something like,

Sarah Moon + Co provides website design and consulting for attorneys and consultants. We're different because we avoid quick fixes and focus on honest, authentic, content-focused techniques to achieve our client's goals.

This is for you to use internally or in casual conversation—you can spiff it up for marketing and such but it helps keep focus on all of your marketing work.

Does a tactic you're considering feed back to that mission or is it way off course? Is your mission/positioning statement still serving you? (Check in with this every so often!)

I hope this helps if you're struggling with talking about what you do!