You've been there. You finally land a call with your dream client, pour out your best pitch... and get greeted with warm smiles and a cold shoulder.
It's not because your work sucks. It's just that your positioning does nothing to stick. Your prospects forget you exist the moment they hang up.
Some agency owners go the buffet route, offering everything to everyone. Others take the minimalist approach, niching down so far they practically disappear. Both strategies make sense on paper, but they're often paper-thin when it comes to driving actual interest.
The real trick? Precision.
Knowing exactly who you're for, what their flaming-hot pain point is, and why your approach isn't just different—it's exactly what they need. Below is a no-fluff, step-by-step guide to help you lock in positioning that stops the scroll, sparks curiosity, and gets your agency into the "we need to talk" pile.
Too many agencies hide behind fluffy words like "full-service," "results-driven," or our old pal "innovative." Congrats—you now sound like a LinkedIn post from 2014. Your prospects' eyes glaze over before they hit the second sentence.
Let's be real. If your agency blends in like cold email number 87 in someone's inbox, it's not the market's fault.
Positioning means getting ruthless about what makes you valuable to a specific buyer with a painful, specific problem. It's the difference between being a commodity and being the only logical choice. Below, you'll find five punchy steps to take your agency from generic to magnetic.
If your USP requires an asterisk and a footnote to explain, it's not positioning. It's a personality test.
Instead, narrow it down like a laser. Who's your best-fit client? What's the maddening, expensive problem they'd pay to solve yesterday? And what's your most effective, high-leverage service to fix it?
Like: "We help DTC brands with flatlining cart conversions overhaul their product pages to actually convert." See how that cuts through the noise? It tells you exactly who needs it and why they should care.
Don't panic—focusing doesn't mean forever. It just means right now, you stop chasing every fish in the ocean and go build a very good spear. You can always expand once you've mastered one slice of the market.
Here's the secret sauce: specificity creates urgency. When someone hears exactly their problem described, they don't casually bookmark your site. They pick up the phone.
Positioning works when clients say, "Wow, that's exactly it." Not, "Hmm, interesting."
Your job is to describe their pain so clearly they assume you've been eavesdropping on their Slack. Get specific. Is the client hearing "just send pricing" on every call? Maybe their message is bland wallpaper.
Give their pain a name like "The Message Muted Website." Pain with a title sticks harder and gives you something memorable to reference throughout your sales process.
Dig deeper than surface symptoms. Sure, their conversion rate is low—but why? Is it because their value prop sounds like corporate buzzword bingo? Because their pricing page feels like solving a riddle? Because mobile users bounce faster than a bad check?
Once you show them you get it, you've earned the right to talk solutions. Not before.
Catchy isn't the goal. Comprehensible is.
Use this template as your cheat code: "We help [audience] who struggle with [problem] by delivering [what you actually do]." For example: "We help eCommerce founders with low mobile conversions fix their product page UX in under 30 days."
If you've got a unique process or signature system, this is where you roll it out (hopefully without naming it something like "the Quantum Revenue Accelerator Method"). Say it out loud. If it sounds like corporate Mad Libs, keep tweaking.
Rule of thumb: if someone can't repeat it after hearing it once, it's not helping you. The best positioning statements work like elevator pitches. They make sense in 15 seconds and leave people wanting to know more.
Test it on your mom, your barista, anyone who'll listen. If they can explain what you do to their friend afterward, you're on the right track.
Think your positioning is great? Cool. Now go prove it to someone who doesn't work for you.
Run it past 5–10 people who look like your dream clients. Ask them what feels clear, what resonates, and where they zone out. Listen for the language they use to describe their problems and steal it shamelessly.
Then, snoop on your competitors' websites. Spot any tired messaging? Any gaps you could punch through? If everyone's talking about "driving growth," maybe you focus on "stopping revenue leaks."
Lastly, get your team on the same page. Slide decks don't sell, people do.
Put your positioning on one page and get everyone aligned so they're not freestyling on sales calls. You'll know you nailed it when prospects mirror your own language back to you.
Great positioning isn't a vibe. It's a system and it should show up where it matters.
Turn your positioning into 3–5 messaging pillars. Think buyer pain, your unfair advantage, and the outcome they wish they had yesterday. Then go update everything. Homepage copy. Cold outreach scripts. Decks. Case studies. Even how team members open discovery calls.
Your website header should echo your cold email subject line should match your LinkedIn About section. Consistency builds trust and makes you memorable across every touchpoint.
Also, store it somewhere durable. Like Notion. Not your head. Pull it up during onboarding, reviews, and team standups. Repetition makes it real, and real positioning turns into revenue.
Pro tip: create a simple messaging doc that everyone can access. Include your positioning statement, key pain points you solve, and the language your best clients use to describe their problems. Update it quarterly as you learn more about what resonates.
You don't need to be the best agency in the world—just the obvious choice to the right people.
Getting your positioning dialed in isn't just some branding side quest. It's how agencies close better deals with fewer calls and make competition irrelevant (or at least less annoying).
So here's your next step. Write a basic positioning line using the "One Audience, One Problem, One Service" structure. Run it past some tough critics. Listen. Adjust. Repeat.
Need sharper feedback, examples that don't sound made up, and war-tested templates? Join the Dynamic Agency Community. It's kind of like having a strategy department, but without the meetings that should've been emails.