Keeping It Simple
The fastest, simplest ways to grow your business - no jargon, no fluff. Practical strategies that actually work for SME owners in the USA, New Zealand, and worldwide.
When an SME owner tells me their marketing isn't working, the conversation almost never ends up being about channels, budget, or creative. It ends up being about positioning — because most marketing that "doesn't work" is actually a clear, specific message going out to the wrong audience, or a vague message going out to the right one. Either way, no amount of spend fixes it.
Marketing amplifies positioning — it doesn't fix it
Marketing is a megaphone. If what you're saying through it is generic — "quality service, competitive prices, family-owned since 1998" — a bigger budget just makes more people ignore you faster. The businesses that get genuine cut-through aren't spending more; they're saying something sharper. Positioning is the work of deciding exactly who you're for, what you do better than the alternative, and why that matters to that specific buyer. Marketing is just the delivery mechanism.
The "who is this NOT for" test
The fastest way to expose weak positioning is to ask an owner who their business is not for. Most can't answer it. If you're trying to appeal to everyone, your message has to stay broad enough that it fits everyone — which means it's specific to no one, and specific is what makes people stop scrolling. Naming your exact customer, in enough detail that some readers instantly know it isn't them, is what makes the ones it is for feel spoken to.
Differentiation lives in the specific, not the superlative
"Best," "leading," and "premium" are claims every competitor makes too, so they cancel each other out and persuade nobody. What actually differentiates is specific: a guarantee your competitors won't offer, a process you can name and explain, a result you can quantify, a niche you've gone deeper into than anyone else bothering to compete there. If your positioning statement could be printed on a competitor's website with the logo swapped, it isn't positioning — it's category description.
Test the message before you spend the budget
Before committing meaningful spend to any channel, test the positioning cheaply: a handful of one-to-one conversations, a small paid post, a direct outreach batch. Watch not just whether people respond, but what they say back — the language they use to describe the problem you solve is usually better copy than anything a brief would produce. Get the message right on a shoestring first. Scaling a weak message with a bigger budget just gets you a more expensive version of not working.
Positioning work isn't a creative exercise — it's a strategic one, and it's usually the highest-leverage hour an owner can spend before touching the marketing budget at all.
Not sure your positioning is as sharp as you think it is? That's one of the first things we pressure-test inside the Simple-Growth System™ — get in touch with Kevin D'Ambros-Smith for a second opinion.
Kevin D’Ambros-Smith
Kevin is the founder of Simple-Growth and a business growth coach with experience at DDB, Ogilvy, and Saatchi & Saatchi. He has co-founded 9 companies, coached 200+ business owners one-on-one, and holds a 9.5/10 NPS. Every article on this blog reflects real-world experience - no theory, no fluff.
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