How to use digital to decide which new market position to pursue.

Here's a business scenario we're running into more and more.

A client decides to make a pivot and they've focused in on several potential pos
itions to pursue. The market demand and revenue potential of each position is ro
ughly equal, and the clients product can be easily modified such that there's no si
gnificant cost difference between building for Position 1, 2, or 3.
Given that they're all essentially equal, how does this client choose which posi
tion to take?
If you've ever worked with a company facing such a pivot, you know how hard it c
an be to answer this question, with meetings that go on for days, not to mention
the hand-wringing and the fear and hesitation that comes with changing the cour
se of an organization.
Which is unfortunate, because today choosing a new position can be done with a h
igh degree of confidence, thanks to the new realities of marketing. Heres how:
When choosing between potential positions, favor the position where the competit
ive set is weakest in digital marketing.
"Wait!" you say, "Base this critical decision about our future on digital market
ing? Isn't marketing That-Thing-That-Happens-After-Everything-Else-Has-Been-Deci
ded?"
Traditionally, maybe that was true, but today marketing should set your course,
because without a market or a product that fulfills a real need, you have nothin
g. Marketing today looks for demand, understands the needs driving that demand,
assesses the competition, and offers a different, better product or service to f
ulfill those needs.
Actually, there's more to it than that. And this is, in part, why digital market
ing is the nuclear core of marketing today.
Because the Internet is increasingly the place people go to hunt for solutions,
and because for each of them "any solution I find is better than the best soluti
on I know nothing about", winning at digital marketing is the first critical ste
p toward winning with your new position. Thus the relative strength or weakness
of a competitive sets' digital marketing must be assessed as part of determining
which position to pursue: in a competitive set with weak digital it will be eas
ier to get your product or service in front of the people looking for a solution
, and vice versa.
It is that simple. So, if you're working on which new position to pursue, don't
make your decision in a vacuum. Bring the living, breathing market and your pote
ntial competitors into the equation instead.
Take a look at:
1. Demand and how it's being expressed every hour of every day on the Internet
2. Who currently shows up in search results as the solution against those expres
sions.
3. Audit their digital marketing effectiveness to determine how easy it will be
for you to unseat them and become the "found" solution
That's how to choose between the positions you're considering.