Opportunities Hidden in Plain Sight: Marketers spend enormous energy making sure their positioning claims are true. But customers don’t position companies based on what companies say. They position them based on what they already believe.

Positioning can be one of the most contentious parts of developing a marketing strategy.

After months of analysis, teams finally arrive at the question: What do we want to own in the customer’s mind? Someone proposes a positioning statement. People debate the language. Eventually, somebody makes the seemingly definitive argument: “But it’s true.” And it may be. The company may really have great technology, outstanding service, deep expertise, or the most advanced solution in its category.

Unfortunately, being true doesn’t make it a good position.

1. Your Customer’s Brain Has a Parking Problem

Customers are overwhelmed with information. They can’t possibly remember everything about every company they might buy from, so their brains simplify. One competitor becomes the technology leader. Another is the low-cost option. Another is safest. Another is easiest to work with.

A colleague of ours once compared positioning to “trying to park in downtown Athens”: if somebody already occupies the space, you can’t simply pull your car into it.

Companies forget this constantly. They decide they want to be perceived as the technology leader because they have terrific technology. But if a competitor already firmly occupies that position in the customer’s mind, declaring yourself the technology leader doesn’t magically evict them. The opportunity hidden in plain sight is recognizing that positioning doesn’t begin with what you want to say. It begins with what’s already in the customer’s mind.

2. Sometimes the Market Positions You

We once worked with a highly successful nutritional-products company that encountered exactly this problem in one of its historically strongest markets. The company believed it was the most scientific, nutritionally advanced solution in its category. And there were perfectly good reasons to believe that was true. But competitors saw an opportunity.

One competitor established a premium, technically advanced brand above our client. At the other end, a simpler, lower-priced alternative appealed to customers primarily concerned with value. Our client’s longstanding leadership suddenly became a liability. Competitors effectively repositioned it as the traditional choice.

Traditional can sound reassuring—until it starts meaning old-fashioned. The company found itself squeezed between newer technology above and better value below, and the position it wanted customers to associate with it became increasingly difficult to own. That’s the danger of assuming that because your desired position is true, customers will believe it.

If you don’t understand the position you already occupy, your competitors may be more than happy to define it for you.

3. Positioning Isn’t a Creative Exercise

There’s another common misconception hiding here. Companies often treat positioning as something creative people do. Bring in the agency, put some smart people around a table, brainstorm ten ideas, and find an exciting way to describe the brand. But that’s starting at the end.

Good positioning begins with strategic questions: Who exactly are we trying to influence? What do they value? How do they currently perceive us? What positions do our competitors already occupy? And where do we have a credible opportunity to own something important? That requires segmentation. It requires understanding customer needs. And it requires knowing where customers perceive you as stronger or weaker than alternatives. Only then does creativity become extraordinarily valuable.

Give a talented agency a clearly defined target customer, the position you currently occupy, the competitive positions surrounding you, and the perception you need to create—and let them work their magic. That’s very different from handing them a blank sheet of paper and asking, “How should we position ourselves?”

4. Sometimes You Have to Position the Problem First

The most interesting positioning opportunity may not even begin with your product. When GSK was trying to grow Paxil in Japan, it faced a significant barrier: depression carried substantial stigma. Before patients could become receptive to a particular treatment, the underlying category itself needed to be reframed.

The breakthrough was to make depression feel more understandable and treatable—famously through the idea of asking whether your “soul has a cold.” That helped create permission for people to recognize the problem, discuss it with healthcare professionals, and ultimately consider treatment. GSK couldn’t simply position Paxil more creatively. It first had to change the mental real estate surrounding the category.

That’s an important reminder for technical marketers. Sometimes customers aren’t evaluating your product incorrectly. They’re starting with a different frame of reference altogether.

5. Start With Their Mind, Not Your Message

The best positioning strategies can seem obvious once they’re established. But getting there requires resisting the temptation to begin with ourselves. Don’t start with the statement you want to make.

Start with the customer you want to win. Understand what matters to them, what they already associate with you, and what they associate with competitors. Then determine whether your current position is valuable, whether it can be strengthened, or whether you need to create a different perception. And only after you’ve done that strategic work should you ask how to express the position creatively.

Because customers don’t care whether the positioning statement in your marketing plan is technically accurate. They only know the position you actually occupy in their minds.