The following is Module 2, Section A of a series called Coherence, introducing key strategies that will enable you to market your institution more coherently.

Overview and Objective

Good news: your market position is something you can choose. You determine who you intend to be when compared to other options in the market. By the end of this lesson, you’ll have a better understanding of market position in general and a clearer grasp of your institution’s “one and only.” 

Key Points

Articulating your market position and influencing your brand are sequential and separate efforts. In our work in higher ed, we see positioning (even used correctly) mistaken for “branding” all the time. Securing your market position in order to affect brand perception is the right sequence. But let’s be clear: these are not the same. Modifying your market position doesn’t become a part of your brand until an external audience knows, understands and accepts that your claim to a position is believable. However, a changed market position can (and will) affect brand over time.

Your market position is objective. You either occupy a position (alone or with others) or you don’t. This is your choice. Want to add a school of dentistry? Do it, or don’t. Up to you. Whether or not an audience believes in what you do? That’s different; that’s brand. To change perception, you must change position.

A market position is completely up to you. The point of a positioning statement is to describe where you are relative to competitors. That’s it. Brand, on the other hand, is completely up to them. As Marty Neumeier says: “It’s not what you say it is, it’s what they say it is.” Brand is a concept in the mind of your customer. Position is strongest when you are an only. It doesn’t mean you have to be the only, but no one will need you if you aren’t.

But get this: you get to choose your market position. Ideally, you will choose a position with no competitors; this position affords you a monopoly. If everyone wants what you deliver and no other school offers it, you will own that market. That’s fairly rare in higher ed, but you will want to choose a position with few competitors in the same arena.

Marty Neumeier provides a great exercise in his book Zag that helps you get to an “only” statement. He insists that until you get to “only,” you don’t have much security in the market.

Activity with Worksheet 2A: Your Positioning Opportunity

So, we’ve included Marty’s excellent question in this worksheet. Begin with your school name. You are the ONLY…what? University? College? Regional campus? Institution? School in our state? College in the West? Catholic University? HBCU? Select a description that identifies your position among your competitive set. Do you have a national or regional reach? Do you have a particular demographic that you serve? Write that in the next line.

Next, determine what you do that truly makes you one-of-a-kind. Are you the singular provider of an academic program? Do you enroll more students than anyone else? Do you have the largest campus? Do you have the most gifted faculty (and can you document it)? What sets you apart? Fill in the blank with your distinction following the word “that” in the exercise.

This will serve as the beginning of your positioning statement. This sentence will be the foundation of your marketing strategy and this will be the big idea upon which your brand will be nurtured.

Now, you may be frustrated because you can’t find an ONLY statement for your university. Our immediate counsel is to start imagining what you could do to carve an ONLY space for your institution. That will take time, work and collaboration. But make this a priority.

For now, we’ve offered some other ways to choose a market position. You might be FIRST at something. You might be LARGEST. You might be BEST (not only, but BEST) with something you deliver alongside competitors. And you might have the MOST of something (volumes in library, acreage, scholarship endowment, as examples). These are also viable ways to position your college.

Start with a deliberate choice of your market position. That choice is in your control.

Next, continue to Module 2, Section B of the Coherence Series: You Have Competitors—Who Are They?