 By establishing the positioning in your web design business, you'll begin to set yourself apart from being just another generic web designer or generic web design company into a brand that stands out from the rest. What's up everyone? I'm Jeffrey at Lightbox. I love talking about web design and the business behind it. And beginning the process of positioning is what took my web design company to the next level where I started to work with my ideal clients. The clients that I really enjoy working with on the projects I love to work on and getting paid at the rates that I felt like I was worth. And I have to admit my first two years as a web design freelancer, I had no idea what positioning was. I never even heard of the concept. It wasn't until a third year of my business where I started to feel stuck and I wanted to get to the next level. And that's when I began my journey in business development. And one of the first things I learned was positioning. And that right there, it changed everything after learning positioning and beginning that journey. That's when my business and my company and my brand started to go on uphill slope and it has been going uphill ever since then. So my goal for this video is to help others out there to begin your journey into the process of positioning yourself, your brand and your business. So what to expect out of positioning? What will positioning do? Well, a couple of key results that you will get from positioning is number one, you're going to be able to define your brand and have more of a clear focus and message. And that right there is what's going to make you stand out from being generic. Now, when I think of generic, I'm going to use a Swiss army knife for an example because a Swiss army knife has got tons of tools that could do all kinds of things, but I would really use it because it doesn't really specialize in anything specifically. For example, I would not use a Swiss army knife to cut a piece of steak. I could, it could get the job done, but it's not an ideal solution. Instead, I would use a proper steak knife. So that's what we want to do. We don't want to be a Swiss army knife of web design, finding and attracting your ideal clients. I think back to a project where you work with a client and it was just dope. Everything just was smooth. The communication was awesome. Every time you communicated with that client, you left the engagement feeling energized. Now imagine if all of your clients were like, they're at least most of them were like that. When we position ourselves, we're actually going to identify who is our ideal client that we want to work with and attract and we're going to make ourselves position to attract them. Now, the next one up, number three is going to be able to land projects that we enjoy working on. I mean, to me personally, I love it when I get a project and I wake up in the morning. I'm just excited to get started and I want to do that every single day. And I also know the feeling of getting a project where it's just not fun. It's something that I just don't want to do. It's something that kind of feel a little bit of burning right here. When I think about it, you know, that's not, that's not why me personally, I got into the creative business. I got in here to work on things I love. That's why I quit my nine to five management job and do this now. So by positioning yourselves, you could discover what kind of projects do you really love to work on and then you position yourselves to attract those kind of projects. And when another project comes your way that you absolutely do not want to work on, it's not a good fit. You could pass on that one. Instead, go with the ones that are coming that you know you're going to have fun with. All right, the next one, number four, and that's being seen as a specialist and an expert. And this one is really important to me. This one is huge because I love it when I work with a client and I'm working with the client for the client. I don't like being an order taker and an order taker is basically when a client just says, Hey, do this, do this, do this, do this. You could make the design. You could put everything together. You could take your time strategizing. You can send it to the client and the client just totally just dismisses whatever your ideas are. Now they're do that because they don't see you as an expert yet. And that's okay when you're new. It takes a little time to get to that next level. But when you start positioning yourself, you're going to start positioning yourself for a more narrow focus. And then the client's going to be able to start seeing you as that expert. To me, a successful relationship with a client is when we're going over a project, we're reviewing the design, the client is giving their feedback. And when the client gives their feedback, instead of saying, Hey, do this. They say, Hey, I got an idea. What do you think about this? And I love that. To me, that is a successful relationship right there. And that is a power of being seen as an expert and as the specialist versus just somebody who's going to take orders. And then number five, and that's going to be being able to raise your prices. The more you specialize, the more you are focused down, the more you are working with your ideal clients, working on the projects you specialize, working and doing the services that you specialize, you're going to be able to add far more value to your clients. You're going to be able to be seen as more of an expert. And therefore you're going to be able to keep on raising your prices. And you should be continuously raising your prices. That should be a nonstop process as long as you are continuing on this path of, you know, positioning, adding more value and growing. Because the more you go down this path, the more value you're going to be adding to your clients and the more value you add, the more you're worth, the more your skills are worth, the more your experience is worth, the more your input in your thought is worth. So these are just a few things. All right. This is just five things that you can get out of positioning, but there's a whole lot more. I could not stress enough, just how important or even vital or crucial it is to properly position yourselves and to take time and to put in the work on this. And that's just not for web designers and for creatives. This is for all businesses. Most businesses already know about this, but if you're anything like me, you might have learned how to build a website before or how to build a company. What is positioning? Well, it's a strategic focus on your business and brand with the words focus and strategy being your key words over here. For us website creators as designers and developers, this is going to be a focus on who are we and who are we really, you know, who do we help and how do we help them? We got to focus on these areas and really define them and be strategical about it. Now, for an example, a generic web design website. Now I really wanted to show one here, but I decided I didn't want to call anyone out, you know, on it, but I know that you've seen them. You probably have one and I've made them as well. The generic website looks something like this. It would have like a tagline that says we help businesses grow. Very generic. It would also say we and us a lot in it, but it wouldn't talk about who we really are, who our core values are, and who the client expects to work with. It doesn't mention anything really about us or personality or anything like that. And then it also wouldn't really define who the client is. And then also for the, what do we do? It would be like a Swiss army knife. It would be like we do everything. We do web design. We do web development. We, we code everything. We do e-commerce. We do SEO. We do digital marketing. We do Facebook marketing. We do brand, you know, like the whole row, the whole ecosystem of building the online thing, you know, it's very generic, very wide. And chances are, I would say about 90, 95, probably even 99% of the time when I see a website like this. And first off, please don't get offended. I am super guilty of this myself, but when I see a website like this, I really think who is the we, who is the us? Is there a we or us? Is there an actual team behind this? And then when I see all those services on there, I really think like, which services do they really do? So here's an example of an amazingly positioned website right here. So as soon as we look at it, you could see who it is first off. So she's already positioned herself as herself. Amazing. So there's already that connection. There's already that guesswork of who is it that I'm actually going to work with is already been taken away. And then right here, right away on the tagline, you could see it says, book more clients for your online coaching business. She has just immediately positioned herself for the type of clients that she wants to work with. And she's also positioned herself on the solution that she could give to them. And if you go through the rest of the site, if you go through the rest of the landing page, you can see finding more online clients doesn't have to be so hard. And then she addresses the challenges and the problems her ideal clients have. That way she's also positioning herself as someone that has the solution for this specific client. This is an amazing example right here of positioning in all areas. She positioned herself as herself. She defined who she is right away. Her personality is all over it shown inside her copy. And then she also defined who her ideal client is. She defined what problems that they have and her solutions on how to fix them. Now, who do you think is going to land bigger projects and more projects? Do you think it's going to be the generic, we help all businesses grow and we do everything type of brand? Or do you think it's going to be this one that's very narrow, very focused and well positioned? Also, who do you think is going to work with the type of clients that they enjoy working with and landing the kind of projects that they want to work with? So the first step is going to be finding your focus. First, you want to find out who you are. I mean, who you really are. Are you a freelancer? Are you agency? Are you a studio or a firm? The goal here is when somebody comes to your website or they go to your social media, they know who you are. They don't have to guess. They don't have to feel like they're talking to someone that is hiding that, you know, it's very transparent that when they land on your website, they know exactly who they are talking to. What type of clients do you want to focus on? So this is where you should write down and build a persona about the type of client that you enjoy working with, build the actual profile, have one visualized. That way, you know, this is the client that I want to work with. And now you can speak to them. Now you can position yourself for them. Same thing that we do with our clients when we take on a project. We want to know who their target market is or target audiences. We find out who that specific market is. We build a persona and then we make the design, the copy and everything focused on that target market. And that's what you got to do for yourself. You got to find out who your ideal client is. And that way you can position yourself and put yourself right in front of that ideal client. What type of projects do you want to land? What do you do? What do you do well? What service and expertise should you focus on? By finding out what kind of projects you really enjoy working with, then you know where to focus your energy on. As far as what kind of services to offer for that particular project, instead of just doing some Swiss army knife thing where you're offering every single service that you could think of. Instead, you could totally narrow it down and be like, I specialize specifically into A, B and C. Keep it really small. Keep it really focused. And well, this is the beginning to niching down. And this is just the start right here. There's a lot more to go into, but this is a good start right here. And this takes work. Now this right here, this is a working on the business part right here. And it's an ongoing process. So if you're feeling overwhelmed by any of this, please, it's all good. The thing that's really important to know about positioning is it's an ongoing journey. Another good place to start is reading this book right here, The Win Without Pitching Manifesto. This is a great introduction, an amazing book. I feel it's a must have for anyone in the creative business that's looking to learn the business side of the creative business. Couple of the next steps that we're going to be looking at after positioning is going to be creating tag lines and mission statements. And I got a couple of videos of those coming up next. So make sure to subscribe and, you know, do all that good YouTube stuff. Subscribe, like really does help. And if you have any questions, please drop them in the comments. I get back to everyone and this is a community. I want to help you with their web design business. So I really appreciate you watching. I'll be back again soon with more web design related content. Thank you.