Having a product that people want to buy is a great recipe for any successful business. However, that is only half of the equation. What if your competitors also have a great product? You can’t afford to lose sales to them, right? To stand out and be unique in the crowded marketplace, your business needs a Market Dominating Position (MDP).

A Market Dominating Position is your business’s Unique Selling Proposition.

Your business might be unique, but it won’t matter to your prospects unless your messaging connects that uniqueness with a hot-button issue or pain that they perceive as important.

This is something about your business that makes your prospect think or say “Because you do this, I’d be foolish not to do business with you!”

Your MDP is a position you stand upon that gives you a strong advantage over your competition even though you are technically doing something similar.

If you can figure this out and find a way to communicate it effectively, it will literally force more customers to do business with you.

Examples of a Market Dominating Position

1. A daycare guarantees your child will be reading at a 2nd-grade level before they enter kindergarten.
2. A real estate agent guarantees to sell your house within 29 days, or they sell it for free.
3. A personal trainer guarantees you’ll lose a certain amount of weight before your wedding day.
4. An online course guarantees you’ll have a job within 30 days of graduation.

Do you now understand how a well-articulated MDP can make your business stand out and speak to the pain point of your ideal customer?

How to craft your Market Dominating Position

To find an advantage over your competitors, you have to know what your competitors are offering and how they are communicating their offers to the public. These are some questions you need to ask yourself to craft your MDP.

1. What are your main competitor’s MDPs? Make a list.
2. What advantages do you offer which make you exceptional in the eyes of the marketplace?
3. What benefits do you offer that might be the same as your competitors but that they aren’t communicating at all?
4. What are your competitor’s biggest weaknesses or shortcomings?
5. Where do you think is the biggest area of opportunity?
6. What additional solutions are you willing to offer to your ideal clients?

If you can spend enough time to answer these questions, you should have an idea of how you could show yourself to be unique while addressing the pain points of your ideal customers.

This pain point should center around two emotional issues:

1. The problem they have and don’t want.
2. The solution they want and don’t have.

Brainstorm your MDP

Now that you know the weaknesses of your competitors, you should have an idea of how you could show yourself to be unique. You may use a template like this to craft your MDP:

“I am aware that many businesses in <my niche/industry> do x, y, and z” (Replace this with three negative things that you are aware of in the industry. Show the pain.)

“We are unlike them. What we do is a, b, c.” (Replace this with three positive things that you do that act as a solution to the pain in the market.)

Now that you have developed the foundation, ask yourself — How else can you say it so that it is even more elegant and convincing? This could take some time.

Once you’ve come up with a few sentences, share them with people close to you to get some feedback. Be prepared, this process could take some time.

Once you have an MDP you feel is solid, ask yourself this question — “Am I confident that if I incorporated this MDP into all of my marketing activities, I’ll see an increase in business?” If so, “what increase do I think this should easily bring?” If not, “What could I do to increase the power of my MDP?”

Determine the areas you could test your MDP

Once you have been able to determine your Unique Selling Proposition using the exercise above as a guide, it’s now time to implement this in your business.

However, if you try to implement it everywhere, you’ll get overwhelmed and possibly end up implementing nothing, or just a few poorly.

Determine a few areas you could test the MDP to get immediate feedback. For example, you could start with a few ad copies, your website, your conversations with customers etc. and look for feedback on the impact of your MDP.

Once you get some feedback, keep refining and fine-tuning it until you feel like you are getting the level of impact (more leads, more conversion etc.) you want.