If Your Own Mother Can't Explain What Your Business Does, You Have a Positioning Problem

By Vicky Sidler | Published 16 September 2026 at 12:00 GMT+2

There is a very easy way to find out whether your business is clearly positioned, and you can run it right now. Call your mother.

Not to ask whether she is proud of you. She is almost certainly proud of you. She may also believe you spend most of your day “doing things on the computer,” but that is a separate and much larger problem for modern society.

Ask her one question: "When someone asks what I do, what do you tell them?"

Then do something incredibly difficult. Listen without helping her. Do not jump in with, "Well, technically..." Do not explain your special process. Do not mention your carefully named, trademarked framework. Do not send her your website and aggressively demand she read the About page first. Just listen.

If she says, "She does marketing," or "He is a physiotherapist," or the truly terrifying version: "I am not fully sure, but she is very busy." ...you have a massive positioning problem.

Not because your mother is uninformed. The problem is that what she is repeating is a category, not a position.

(By the way, this works just as well with your sibling, your grandparent, your best friend—anyone who knows you incredibly well.)

TL;DR

• “Marketing,” “physiotherapy,” “accounting,” and “law” are categories. They tell people the broad shelf you sit on. They do not tell anyone why they should choose you.

• Vague positioning is extremely expensive. It makes your website useless, your referrals confusing, your ads expensive, and your sales calls exhausting.

• You can do many things, but you just need to be known for one clear, expensive problem you solve better than the generic alternative.

👉 Positioning is just one piece of the puzzle. There are 9 other elements required to build a Failure-Proof Marketing System. Download the Failure-Proof Marketing Roadmap and stop losing clients to generic AI slop.

Table of Contents

The First Marketing Lesson I Ever Learned

When I was a child, other kids would casually announce things like, "My dad is a doctor," or "My mom is a lawyer."

This was highly useful information. A doctor fixes people. A lawyer argues professionally. Even as a child, I could roughly understand the job description.

My own dad was much more difficult to explain. I had been to his factory many times. I knew there were machines. I knew there were wires. I knew grown-ups walked around looking intensely serious and carrying things that appeared expensive. So, I proudly told the other children: "My dad is a factory worker."

This did not go down especially well.

My dad eventually found out and made me memorize the following sentence: "My dad is an electrical engineer who builds high-voltage capacitors for Eskom so that everyone gets reliable electricity."

I had absolutely no idea what that meant. I learned it the exact same way I learned my street address: as a collection of sounds I was expected to repeat if somebody asked. I didn't understand high-voltage capacitors. I didn't understand Eskom. I barely understood electricity beyond the fact that it powered the television and made it dangerous to stick things into plugs.

None of the other children understood it either. They had their own pressing concerns, such as marbles, sticker books, and whether anyone had seen the class hamster.

But that sentence was not really for me. And it was not really for them. It was for the adults standing nearby.

It told them my dad was not simply “a factory worker.” He was an electrical engineer. He worked on a very specific part of the power system. And his work led to an outcome they could actually understand: reliable electricity.

That, right there, was positioning.

A Category Is Not a Position

If someone who loves you, genuinely wants you to succeed, and has heard you talk about your business for years can only describe you as a generic version of everyone else in your industry... imagine what a potential client thinks after spending exactly eleven seconds on your homepage while eating a sad sandwich between meetings!

A category tells people what general type of business you have: "She is an accountant," or "He is a consultant." These are not bad descriptions; they are just deeply incomplete. They tell someone which aisle to find you in. They do not tell them why you are the person they should choose once they get there. A category is something your competitors can claim just as easily as you can.

If someone says, "I know a great accountant," the next question is obvious: "Great for what?" Does that accountant help family-run firms avoid cash-flow problems before payroll arrives? Do they help e-commerce companies understand their margins? Or do they broadly perform accounting, in the exact same way that all restaurants broadly provide food?

The more expensive, stressful, and important the problem, the less interested your buyer is in a generic category. They do not want “some kind of consultant.” They want the person who uniquely understands the thing that is going catastrophically wrong in their business right now.

Before moving on:

Getting your positioning right is actually only one of ten elements of a Failure-Proof Marketing System. To discover the other nine elements you need to build a pipeline you can trust, download The Failure-Proof Marketing Roadmap.

What Vague Positioning Is Quietly Costing You

Most founders assume vague positioning is something clients will just "work out" once they get on a sales call. They are wrong, and it is incredibly expensive. When your positioning is vague, you do not just lose leads—you make everyone around you work infinitely harder just to send you business.

• Your visitor has to figure out whether you are relevant.

• Your best client has to figure out how to describe you when they want to refer you.

• Your prospect has to compare you with every generic alternative at the exact same price.

• Your sales call has to exhaustingly explain what your website should have already explained.

And then founders wonder why referrals feel totally random and leads feel painfully unpredictable!

A 2025 survey of B2B buyers found that 35% said suppliers misunderstood their business priorities, and 30% said suppliers misunderstood their industry-specific pain points. That is not a small messaging problem. That is a wide-open door for any service business willing to say something specific! The goal is not to make everyone feel warmly included—it is to make the right people feel uncomfortably understood.

You Can Do Many Things Without Being Known for Everything

This is exactly where founders get nervous. They think choosing a clear position means they must suddenly turn away every single client who does not fit perfectly inside one tiny box. Rest assured, it does not.

Choosing a clear position does not mean turning away good work; it means leading with one clear, expensive problem you solve better than the generic alternative.

My agency does a lot of things. We work on SEO, paid ads, social media, GEO, email, websites, content, video, messaging, lead generation, and strategy. If I listed every tool we can use, it would become a spreadsheet long enough to qualify as light cardio! But I absolutely do not want people to remember Strategic Marketing Tribe as “someone who does marketing.” Every competitor can say that.

What I want people to remember is this: "Strategic Marketing Tribe builds Failure‑Proof Marketing Systems for service businesses."

We help service-based founders stop relying on random tactics, unpredictable referrals, and the exhausting cycle of feast-or-famine leads. The Failure‑Proof Marketing System is the thing we are known for. It is the specific answer to a bigger, more expensive problem. Your positioning is not a complete list of everything you can do. It is the clearest explanation of why someone should remember you.

The Physiotherapist Who Treats Much More Than One Problem

One of my clients is a physiotherapist. He could list every condition he treats—headaches, shoulder pain, ankle pain, chronic pain, fibromyalgia, old injuries, new injuries—and his homepage would read like the exhausting index of a medical textbook.

Instead, he leads with the problem his best-fit patients are most worried about: "I help people with chronic pain reduce their reliance on painkillers and avoid risky surgery."

That does not limit who he helps—it makes the people most likely to value his expertise violently stop and think, "Wait, could this be the person who helps me avoid surgery?" In 2023, 24.3% of U.S. adults had chronic pain. That is a massive group with a problem they understand well and have every reason to want solved. The category is physiotherapy. The position is helping people living with chronic pain find non-surgical options.

How to Find the Problem You Should Own

Your position is already hiding in your client history—most founders just haven't looked for it yet. Do not choose a problem because it sounds impressive to your peers. Look for hard evidence in the people who already value your work. Ask yourself:

1. Which clients get the clearest, fastest, most valuable outcome from us?

2. What was visibly going wrong before they hired us—in money, time, risk, stress, or missed opportunity?

3. What had they already tried (and failed at) before coming to us?

4. Which clients value our expertise instead of treating us like a cheap commodity?

5. What do our best clients tell other people we helped them do?

Look for the thread. You may discover you are not simply 'an HR consultant'—you are the person who helps growing businesses stop losing their best people because accidental managers are burning them out.

The Competitor Swap Test

Here is a simple test you can run right after the Mother Test. Take the exact sentence someone uses to describe your business and swap your name with a competitor’s name. If it still works perfectly, you have described a category, not a position.

For example: "James does real estate law." That could describe hundreds of people.

Try this: "James helps industrial property owners avoid signing lease agreements that quietly trap them in expensive terms for the next five years."

Now there is something to actually remember! Not every property lawyer will want to own that specific problem. Not every property lawyer has the proof, experience, process, or client stories to back it up. And not every potential client facing that exact problem will ignore it.

You do not need to be known for everything you can do. You need to be known for the problem you solve best, clearly enough that the people who need it most can find you, understand you, and confidently send others your way.

👉 Stop hiding behind a category. Learn the other 9 elements you need to build a pipeline you can actually trust. Download The Failure-Proof Marketing Roadmap today.

Related Articles

1. Why “Everyone” Can’t Be Your Target Audience (A Five-Minute Reality Check)

If you are still afraid to narrow your audience after reading this, this article proves exactly why broad positioning kills your marketing, and how the "Sidewalk Test" can give you a reality check.

2. The Real Reason Your "Great Offer" Isn't Selling (Hint: It's Not Your Copy)

If your mother can't explain your business, neither can your website copy. This piece explains why a misaligned strategy is destroying your sales and how the StoryBrand framework can clarify your message.

3. Your Marketing Isn't Broken. One of These Three Things Is

If your broad presence is causing strangers to bounce from your website in 50 milliseconds, this article breaks down the exact 5-second diagnostic tests you need to run to stop the bleeding.

4. Why Service Businesses Get Stuck in Feast or Famine (And How to Fix It)

If your vague positioning leaves your pipeline terrifyingly empty every few months, this article shows you how to stabilize your revenue by narrowing your focus and connecting your fragments.

5. What to Fix First When Your Marketing Stops Working (The Order Matters)

If you are finally ready to fix your foundation, this article lays out the exact 4-part sequence of leverage you must follow so you don't waste time fixing the wrong things.

FAQs

1. What is the difference between a category and a position?

A category tells people the broad shelf you sit on (e.g., "Accountant," "Marketing Agency," "Physiotherapist"). A position is the specific, expensive problem you solve better than the generic alternative (e.g., "I help e-commerce brands navigate complex tax compliance").

2. Will choosing a clear position turn away potential clients?

No. Choosing a clear position doesn't mean you must refuse all other work; it means you lead with a specific, expensive problem to capture attention. When your best-fit prospects feel uniquely understood, they are far more likely to hire you over a generic competitor.

3. How do I know if my positioning is vague?

Run the "Mother Test" or the "Competitor Swap Test." If your clients, friends, or family describe your business in a way that could equally apply to 50 of your competitors, your positioning is vague and is actively costing you leads.

4. Why are referrals unpredictable when my positioning is weak?

When your positioning is vague (e.g., "She does marketing"), you force your referral sources to work hard to explain what you actually do. If they don't know the exact problem you solve, they won't know when to trigger the referral.

5. How do I figure out what my position should be?

Look at your past client data. Identify which clients got the best, fastest results, which ones valued your expertise the most, and what specific "trigger event" or expensive problem was occurring right before they decided to hire you.