Does it matter to you?

Positioning still matters, just not in the way we’ve thought it does.

Have you read How Brands Grow: What Marketers Don’t Know? You probably should if you want to keep working in our business.

Byron Sharp, the author, explains why brands should be moving away from positioning and towards salience, the “propensity to be noticed or come to mind in buying situations.”

Wait, you’re saying about now. I’m in Programming, not Sales or Marketing. As if that mattered.

When listeners have as many choices for their attention as we all have now, your station’s salience, and your own personal salience are a big freaking deal.

You don’t just compete with the other stations in your format in your city. You compete with every station.

More importantly, you compete with Spotify and Apple Music and Sirius XM and every radio station around the world which it is now possible to listen to online any time we want.

You compete with everything that provides entertainment and/or information that is now easily accessible everywhere your phone works.

So, standard positioning would have you aspire to the top spot within your category. If there are two Country stations in your town, your Country station needs to be first in the listener’s mind. And that’s still true, if the listeners in your town only care about giving their attention to Country music radio stations.

You and I both know that isn’t true.

Where positioning still matters though is with your employees. Check it out:

“People come to work, at least in part, for purpose and positioning. They want to believe they’re working for the winner and doing great things. The messages that resonate with consumers are totally different from the ones that work with employees.”

Intrigued? Read the article it came from HERE.

And check out How Brands Grow. It’s definitely worth your time.