Istanbul

Are you violating the basic rule of positioning?

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I’m still in Istanbul and I’m getting sick of the place.

Every restaurant, every bar, even every apartment I’ve stayed in, has a great view.

A view of the grey waters of the Bosporus… of the millions of lights that go on at dusk… of the dozens of monstrous-sized mosques that line the horizon.

Now of course, I’m being a little facetious.

I like a great view just like your average gadabout.

But the fact that EVERY place in Istanbul has a view actually complicates my job of being a tourist.

Because deep down, I keep remembering something that a frequent traveling partner of mine taught me:

“I won’t eat in that restaurant,” he would say, “because it has a good view. A restaurant can either sell the view or the food, but not both.”

That might sound simplistic, but it’s the basic way the human mind works.

At least if you believe one of the most influential marketing books of all time, Positioning, written by Al Ries and Jack Trout.

There’s a lot in this book about how companies, brands, and even individuals can carve out a position for themselves in a crowded market.

But the basic image that Ries and Trout give is simple:

Your position is like a hook in the customer’s mind that you hang your product on.

And if you try to hang multiple things from that hook, or try to hang your product from multiple hooks, that’s when trouble starts.

In other words, you want to position your restaurant as either having good food…

Or a good view…

But not both, because your customers’ brains simply won’t follow you.

And the same thing holds if you’re not in the restaurant business — but in any other business.

Of course, you can offer, say, great prices as well as a dedicated service.

But put just one of those forward as your main position. And if Ries and Trout are right, you will create a position in the market that allows you to win customers more easily and keep them around for longer.

Beware the trap of the digital bazaar

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I’m in Istanbul, Turkey this week. And though it’s my third time in this city, there are some things I didn’t notice before.

Such as how similar businesses here seem to live in packs.

Maybe it all started at the Grand Bazaar. The spice sellers stick to themselves. The leather shops do too. But the same thing happens throughout the city as well.

So for example, there is a large metal bridge right in the center of Istanbul

On the top level of this bridge is where the cars go.

One level down, there are a bunch of restaurants selling fish, mostly fried, mostly just stuck in a hunk of bread.

There are about a dozen of these fish restaurants in a row, and they are all identical.

Including the fact that in front of each restaurant, there is a tired-looking man with sunken, hungry eyes who is in charge of roping in passersby to sit down at his restaurant specifically.

“Come inside. We have fish. We have the best fish.”

Now these guys are obviously making a living out of it, because these restaurants have been here for decades or even longer.

But it looks like bloody work.

And it seems like it would be much better and more lucrative for them to differentiate themselves in some way, whether by picking a different location, or by offering a different menu, or even by telling a different story than the guy next door.

And that’s true for any other kind of business as well.

You might think that your core offer is no different than that of a dozen other businesses.

And you can decide to live with that… To compete simply by working harder… And to accept that eventually, some customer will sit down inside your den instead of the identical one next door.

By why not make your job a little easier by differentiating yourself from all the other people inside the digital bazaar?

One easy way to do that is simply through your personality, and through the relationship you have with your clients, customers, or restaurant patrons. All you have to do is to reach out to them regularly, with a unique point of view, and that relationship will start to develop, and eventually, it will bear fruit as well.

Just something to keep in mind. And of course, if you want some help with that, then this can get you started:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/