Positioning

by Ed Newman
AMSOIL Director of Advertising
This article appeared in National Oil & Lube News, July 2006

The two biggest influences on our lives are the people we meet and the books we read.  In some ways, reading a good book is the same as meeting a person, because a book is really the contents of a mind poured out onto a page. 

I love books.  When I find authors with whom I connect, I usually keep mining. As long as their other books keep yielding gold, I will keep reading to extract the contents.

One pair of highly influential business writers these past forty years is Al Ries and Jack Trout. I first discovered Ries and Trout through their bestseller Marketing Warfare, which drew upon the principles of an 18th century general, Karl von Clausevitz, to teach modern businesses the proper stance toward competition.  Tremendously useful. 

Since the mid-1960’s Ries and Trout have positioned themselves as marketing gurus by cranking out a series of easy to read but well thought out business books dealing primarily with branding.  A central pillar of their message is the importance of winning the battle for the mind.  Hence, one of their bestsellers is aptly titled, Positioning: The Battle for the Mind.  The premise of this article here is to underscore the importance of positioning your quick lube so that it becomes pre-eminent in the minds of your customers when they want an oil change.  If your quick lube is not in your customers’ minds, you’ll be forgotten.

Different Positions

According to Ries and Trout there are numerous positioning strategies from benefits to customers to identifying a class of users.  Sometimes you want to position yourself against a competitor, but you can also position yourself away from a competitor in an alternate niche.  It is essential that you think through who you are and how you are perceived in the minds of those in your community.

When establishing your position you especially want to key in on differences. How you are different, Ries and Trout have noted, should be important (not just silly), distinctive, communicable, superior and powerful enough that competitors cannot easily copy it.

Making It Happen

According to the authors, your quick lube must be positioned relative to the consumers’ needs and values.  This means you must understand what is in their minds, and position yourself accordingly. 

For example, a lube shop could position itself as the Environmentally Friendly Lube Shop.  By promoting extended drain synthetic oils, and pushing the message of reduced waste due to fewer oil changes, you can set yourself apart from the competition and create an intriguing message for customers because most associate “oil industry” with “bad for environment.”  If you can tell your story well, and price the service properly, you will make a pre-eminent impression in a lot of minds.
 
I once attended a workshop in which an ad agency in San Francisco positioned itself by promoting its skill at producing catalogs.  There were dozens of agencies that could create catalogs, but they even named their agency The Catalog House or something like that.  It helped them attract manufacturers, and once they got the catalog business, they got all the rest of their advertising and PR business.

Quick lubes are like a commodity service.  In the mind of most car owners, they are all alike. What you need to do is differentiate yourself.  A welcome sign in Spanish will invite the Hispanic drivers in your area, who happen to be a very loyal buying group. 

Motorists who know that European drain intervals are longer, who drive more expensive imports, may become loyal customers if you advertise your synthetic line and show that you understand their benefits.

At the end of the day, in an increasingly competitive world, you need to set yourself apart from the herd. The versatile benefits of a premium synthetic oil will help you target any number of positions, from premium performance to ultimate convenience, and one of the hottest positions today: a solution to the problem of high fuel prices.