Brand Positioning 101: What’s Your Brand Gap?

You’ve been trying to build a successful online venture, but something in your brand positioning isn’t working. This ‘something’ is the reason why your income falls far short of your earning potential; why the clients you want aren’t finding you; or why your first instinct is to dash out of the room whenever someone asks what you do.

This ‘something’ is a brand gap: a disconnect between how you present online and how you wish you presented. It’s more common than you might imagine, and odds are that you’re dealing with one right now but don’t have a clue.

The good news is that this problem isn’t insurmountable. Plenty of women have gone down these same trenches while learning how to build an online brand, and lived to tell the story.

The bad news? Course-correcting is going to take time and strategy. And the first step in the process? That would be figuring out what your unique gap is.

Why Brand Positioning Isn’t One-Size-Fits-All

When faced with a brand positioning dilemma, the question a lot of us start with is, Why doesn’t my brand look perfect? when we really should be asking, Why isn’t my positioning saying what I want it to say?

The distinction lies in our definition of “perfect,” which differs from one person to the next. So a solution that may be perfect for one brand may end up being a total mismatch for your own.

Part of the confusion is that advice around this topic tends to treat “fix your brand” as one big monolithic task, with most of it skewing towards microwave-popcorn patch jobs such as refreshing your website, choosing a niche, or settling on a consistent visual identity.

In all fairness, these do work, provided they’re what your brand really needs. Otherwise, they fall flat — kind of like going to a skin doctor to treat the hormonal acne that’s taken over your face only to be told to drink more water.

Not bad advice per se, but completely beside the point for what you’re dealing with.

Sometimes a visual refresh is what your brand needs. But if the core issue lives in how you’re positioned in terms of your offer or message rather than in your visual identity, then a polished aesthetic would be like a new coat of paint on a misaligned foundation. Pretty, but still crooked.

Keep in mind that a brand positioning gap will often show up first as an aesthetic imbalance — terrible fonts, bad photographs, messy Instagram grid — because what you see with your naked eye tends to be the most obvious hindrance to your growth. But these kinks are usually just symptoms rather than the disease.

This is why it’s important to analyse what isn’t working for you individually, rather than settling on what isn’t working for everyone in general.

The 3 Types of Brand Gaps for Online Business

In my experience, I’ve found that brand gaps fall into three distinct, albeit closely related, categories. While they may look similar on the surface, each one produces different symptoms and requires a completely different response.

The first is a visibility gap and has to do with how you show up online, if you show up at all. It’s hard to establish a client base when people don’t even know you exist.

The second is a presentation gap and revolves around how you position yourself online when you do show up, and whether this positioning is landing with the people you’re trying to reach.

The third is a clarity gap and deals with how you communicate your offer: the language around what you do, why you do it, and who you’re doing it for. When your audience is at a loss about these very basic concepts, they disengage.

Give the same generic advice to women experiencing any of these gaps, and you’ll get three different levels of confusion. But meet them where they actually are, and the path forward becomes much clearer.

So, which one is yours?

A Quick Brand Positioning Gut Check

Don’t overthink this. Just pay attention to whichever question lands most sharply for you.

1. When someone asks what you do, what happens? Do you over-explain? Undersell? Give a different answer depending on who’s asking and hope one of them lands?
2. When you think about sending someone to your website or social profile, what do you feel? Pride? Mild embarrassment? The kind of avoidance that involves suddenly remembering you have laundry to do?
3. When you think about who knows you exist versus who should know you exist, how significant is that distance? Do people who’ve experienced your brand in real life have a different reaction to those who find you online first?

Most women will feel one of these questions more heavily than the others. That discomfort is usually pointing toward something specific. The real question is what, exactly, and what needs to change because of it.

The Right Next Step

Take the Brand Gap Quiz today and figure out where your brand’s disconnect is. Eight questions, two minutes, one clear result, and a path forward that’s built around your gap, not someone else’s.

Remember: the wrong diagnosis will have you applying the wrong solutions and wondering why nothing is sticking.

On the other hand, a woman who understands the precise nature of the gap she’s dealing with can finally stop the cycle of tweaking and adjusting and start building a brand structure designed for longevity.

That’s the work we’re here to do.