Episode 12: How a Wrong ICP Breaks Your Positioning: Why Your Actual Customers Don't Recognize Themselves

I'm Jason Hager, and this is Marketing Notes for Entrepreneurs from Grey Leaf Media,

where impact-driven leaders use trust, clarity and strategy to turn good work into sustainable

growth.

This is the fourth episode in our series on how a wrong ICP cascades through your entire

marketing system.

Last time, we talked about how a wrong ICP breaks your content strategy.

Today, how it breaks your positioning.

Here's a question worth sitting with.

When your actual customers land on your website, do they immediately think this is exactly

what I need?

Or do they have to work to figure out what you do?

Picture a founder landing on their own home page as if seeing it for the first time.

The headline reads clearly, "Services are listed.

It all makes sense."

But there's a half-second delay before they can answer what it's actually for.

Most founders assume if someone doesn't understand their positioning, they're not the right

customer.

They're not smart enough.

They're not ready.

They're not the ICP.

But what if confusion isn't a filter?

What if it's a signal?

What if your actual customers, the people already buying from you, getting value from you,

referring others to you, land on your website and don't recognize themselves?

What if your positioning had written so precisely for a theoretical customer that the people

actually funding your business have to squint to see themselves in it?

That's not a customer problem.

That's a positioning problem, and it's almost always caused by the same thing, a wrong ICP.

This is episode 12 how a wrong ICP breaks your positioning.

Let's talk about being positioned for a customer who isn't buying, while the ones who are can't

figure out why you're for them.

What positioning actually is?

Before we get into how it breaks, let's be clear about what positioning actually is because

it's one of the most misunderstood concepts in marketing.

Positioning is not your tagline.

It's not your mission statement.

It's not your elevator pitch.

Positioning is the answer to one question in your customer's mind.

Is this for me?

That's it.

All the complexity of brand strategy, messaging, architecture, value, propositions, everything

hangs on that one question.

When someone encounters your brand for the first time, they're not analyzing.

They're recognizing.

They think, "Do I recognize my problem?

Do I see myself as the person they serve?

Does this feel like it was built for someone like me?"

If the answer is yes, they lean in.

If the answer is no, or "I'm not sure," they move on.

And here's the critical thing.

That evaluation happens based on who you've positioned for, not who you actually serve,

who you've communicated that you serve.

When your ICP is wrong, you've communicated that you serve someone who isn't buying,

which means the people who are buying encounter your positioning and don't see themselves.

They move on.

And the people you've positioned for encounter your positioning, recognize themselves, and

then don't buy, because the product or service doesn't actually serve them well.

You've built a door for the wrong house.

You haven't positioned for who you serve.

You've positioned for who you described.

If you listened to the Trustwall series, you heard me talk about foundation work.

The invisible, unglamorous work of clarifying your values, your mission, and exactly who

you exist to serve.

I called it the most important work, most businesses skip.

Positioning is where that foundation meets the market.

It's the first visible expression of everything you've built underneath.

When the foundation is right, when you've done the real work of understanding who you actually

serve, positioning can be direct, specific, and instantly recognizable to the right people.

But when your ICP is wrong, you've built your foundation on a false assumption, and positioning

built on a false assumption will always feel slightly off.

Not broken enough to ignore, not clear enough to convert.

Your actual customer's squint at it.

They kind of see themselves, but they have to work to get there.

And working to understand your positioning is the last thing a potential customer should

have to do.

The three ways it breaks.

When your ICP is wrong, positioning breaks in three specific ways.

First, you're describing the wrong problem.

Segway launched in 2001 with the positioning built entirely around one premise.

Cities would be more transformed by personal electric transportation.

Their positioning spoke to urban commuters who wanted to replace short car and walking

trips with something faster, cleaner, more efficient.

They built for one reality.

The market responded with another.

Cities didn't restructure around the Segway.

The infrastructure, the culture, the practical reality of urban commuting didn't match the

positioning at all.

Urban commuters didn't buy.

Who actually bought?

Mall security, tourism companies, warehouse operators, police departments.

These buyers weren't described anywhere in Segway's positioning.

They had to look past it to find a use for the product.

Some did, but Segway never repositioned around them because the market wasn't the vision.

Your positioning kept describing a problem.

Urban commuting.

While the problem their actual customers had, efficient short-range movement in controlled

environment, went completely unaddressed in how they showed up to market.

Your positioning does the same thing when your ICP is wrong.

You describe a problem your theoretical customer has.

Your actual customers read it and think that's not quite my situation.

They might still buy, but they have to work harder to see themselves in what you offer,

and many won't bother.

Second, you're using the wrong vocabulary.

Blackberry built their positioning around enterprise IT departments.

Their language was security, compliance, mobile device management, enterprise integration.

That language was perfect for their ICP, corporate technology decision makers in large organizations.

But when smartphones changed the game, the actual purchase decision shifted.

Individual employees started choosing their own devices.

The new decision maker wasn't the IT department.

It was the employee.

And employees didn't speak the language of enterprise security and compliance.

They spoke in terms of apps, ease of use, design, and how it fit into their personal lives.

The decision moved.

Their language didn't.

Blackberry's positioning kept speaking to IT departments while the people actually making

the decision had changed completely.

Their language became invisible to the new buyer.

They kept speaking to authority after authority had already shifted.

This is vocabulary misalignment.

Your actual customers read your positioning and recognize the category.

The specific language doesn't resonate.

It feels like it was written for someone slightly different than them.

And slightly different is enough to make them hesitate or leave.

Third, you're differentiating on the wrong things.

In 2011, JC Penny brought in a new CEO who redesigned the entire brand around a new theoretical

ICP, sophisticated shoppers who were tired of manufactured sales and fake discounts.

People who wanted honest, everyday low prices and would appreciate a retailer who respected

their intelligence.

The new differentiation was clarity and honesty and pricing.

No more coupons.

No more was $80, now $40.

Just real prices all the time.

Sounds like smart marketing.

Sounds like it would resonate.

Except JC Penny's actual customers weren't sophisticated shoppers who found coupons insulting.

They were deal hunters.

People who got genuine satisfaction from using a coupon and feeling like they'd want something.

The ritual of finding a sale, applying a discount, walking out having paid less than the listed

price.

That was the point.

Removing coupons didn't feel more honest to them.

It felt like the store stopped rewarding them, like they'd lost something.

Revenue dropped 25% in a single year.

The CEO was gone in 17 months.

JC Penny differentiated on something their theoretical ICP valued.

Their actual customers valued the opposite.

Your positioning makes the same mistake when you lead with attributes that matter to

the customer you want, while the customer who's actually buying needs to hear something

completely different.

How to diagnose it.

Here's how to tell if your positioning is broken by a wrong ICP.

Diagnostic one, the Recognition Test.

Show your home page or your core positioning statement to five of your best actual customers.

Ask them one question.

When you first found us, did this immediately feel like it was describing your situation?

If most of them say no or kind of, or I had to look around a bit to figure it out, your

positioning isn't speaking to who's actually buying.

If recognition wasn't immediate, it wasn't clear.

Diagnostic two, the vocabulary gap.

Pull your positioning.

Then pull three actual customer conversations, sales calls, onboarding notes, client emails.

Compare the language.

Do they sound the same?

Does your positioning use the same words, phrases, and framing your actual customers use when

they describe their problem?

Or is there a translation layer, where they have to mentally convert your language into

their reality?

The translation layer is costing you customers.

The degree of translation is friction.

And friction at the positioning stage means people leave before they ever understand what

you actually offer.

If those don't match, your positioning isn't doing the work.

Diagnostic three, the Differentiation Relevance Check.

What do you claim makes you different?

Go ahead, write it down.

Now ask your last ten customers.

What made you choose us over alternatives?

Do their answers match your stated differentiation, or do they cite completely different reasons?

If customers are choosing you for reason that don't appear in your positioning, two things

are true.

Your positioning isn't driving decisions, and your leaving conversion on the table by not

leading with what actually matters to them.

Diagnostic four, the Is This For Me Test.

Have someone outside your business, ideally someone who matches your actual customer profile,

read your positioning cold, no context, ask them, who do you think this is for?

If their answer doesn't match your actual customer base, your positioning is communicating

the wrong ICP to everyone who encounters it.

How to fix it.

Step one, rewrite your positioning around your actual customer's problem.

Not the problem you assumed they had, the problem they describe in their own words.

Go back to customer conversations.

Find the moment where they explain why they came looking for a solution.

Pay attention to their explanation, reflect it back in their words at their level of awareness.

That sentence is your positioning.

Segway never did this for their actual buyers.

They stayed committed to the urban commuter vision, even as warehouse managers and tour operators

found creative ways to use the product.

If they had listened to who was actually buying and why, the positioning conversation would

have been completely different.

Step two, adopt your actual customers vocabulary.

The words in your positioning need to be words your actual customers already use.

Not words you think sound right.

Not industry terminology that makes you sound sophisticated, the actual language of the

people buying.

This feels uncomfortable.

The language customers use is often simpler, more direct, less polished than what you'd

choose for yourself.

But positioning isn't about sounding right.

It's about being understood, instantly, without effort.

It's about being recognized.

If your customers say, "I can't figure out where my leads are going," and your positioning

says, "Full funnel revenue attribution," you're speaking two different languages.

One of them has to change, and it's not the customers.

Step three, lead with what actually drives decisions.

Your differentiation should be built around what your actual customers say made them choose

you.

Not what you assume should matter.

This requires asking directly.

What was the deciding factor for you?

The answers will often surprise you.

Speed of response?

A specific feature you considered minor.

The way someone on your team communicated, the format of your deliverable.

What drives decisions is rarely what you lead with.

When you actually ask, the gap between what you're featuring and what they're buying

on becomes very clear.

J.C. Penny assumed sophisticated shoppers wanted pricing honesty.

Their actual customers wanted to feel like they want.

Those are completely different things, and no amount of brand refresh would fix a differentiation

built for the wrong buyer.

Step four, test the repositioning with actual customers

before publishing.

Before you rewrite your website or core messaging, test the new positioning with five

actual customers.

Not your network.

Not people who you know.

People who match your actual ICP.

Show them the new positioning.

Ask if it immediately feels like it's describing their situation.

Return to what still feels off.

Repositioning is expensive to do twice.

A few conversations before you commit will save you months of wondering why the new messaging

isn't working.

Here's what I want you to do this week.

Start with recognition.

Ask your best customers.

When you first landed on our website, did it immediately feel like we were describing

your situation?

Their answer will tell you more about your positioning than any brand strategy exercise.

If they had to work to see themselves, you've already lost them.

Because positioning isn't what you say about yourself, it's what your actual customers

understand about you the first time they encounter you.

If the foundation is solid, but the door is built for the wrong house, the right people

will walk past it every time.

I'm Jason Hager and this is Marketing Notes for Entrepreneurs from Grey Leaf Media.

For leaders who believe profit and purpose don't have to be at odds.

If your positioning isn't speaking to who's actually buying, that's exactly the kind

of problem we untangle in brand therapy.

We help you find the language, the framing, and the differentiation that resonates with

your actual customers.

Not a theoretical version of them.

Start here.

Greyleafmedia.com/diagnostic

And if your website is where the positioning lives and it's not converting, we build and

maintain WordPress sites designed to communicate clearly to the right people.

Greyleafmedia.com/Services

Next time, how a wrong ICP breaks your sales messaging?

Why every sales conversation feels like pushing uphill?

And why it's probably not your sales skills?

Till then, go ask a customer if your positioning actually sound like them.

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