Pull up the websites of 10 marketing agencies in Lagos. Read the homepage headline of each one. How many say some version of 'We help businesses grow'? Eight? Nine? All ten?
This is the brand positioning crisis in African business. Everyone sounds like everyone else. And when everyone sounds the same, the buyer defaults to cheapest — which is a race nobody wins.
What Positioning Actually Is
Positioning is not your logo. It's not your brand colors. It's not your tagline. Positioning is the answer to one question in your potential client's mind: 'Why them, specifically?'
If your positioning doesn't have a clear answer to that question, you don't have positioning. You have decoration.
The Positioning Framework
Step 1: Define Your Who
The biggest positioning mistake African businesses make: trying to serve everyone. 'We work with startups, SMEs, corporates, and NGOs.' This tells your ideal client nothing. It tells them you're not specialized for them.
- Pick one primary audience segment
- Understand their specific, embarrassing problem
- Know what they've already tried and why it failed
- Know what a successful outcome looks like to them
Step 2: Define Your What
Not what you do — what outcome you produce. 'We do social media management' is what. 'We get professional service businesses 10 qualified leads per month from LinkedIn' is the outcome your positioning should lead with.
Step 3: Define Your Why Them
This is where most positioning work stops too early. What makes you different isn't just what you do — it's how you do it, who you've done it for, and what you uniquely understand about the market.
The goal of positioning is not to appeal to more people. It's to be the only obvious choice for the right people.
A Quick Test
Show your homepage to someone who doesn't know your business. Ask them: 'In one sentence, who does this company help and with what specific problem?' If they can't answer clearly, your positioning needs work.