Positioning and messaging with AI is a Skill: one well-built prompt walks your real material through a proven method, and the job takes an afternoon. You come away with one page that names your category, the customer you are for, and why that customer should choose you, plus the words that carry it. Positioning is the decisions. Messaging is the language. The AI runs the method and lays out the options. You make the choice, because the choice is the whole point.
- Shape
- Skill
- Sitting
- an afternoon
The shape: Skill
This job is a Skill because nothing here needs a tool, a connection or a chain of steps. It needs one good prompt, the right material under it, and the judgment to reject weak answers quickly.
The method is not new. Most positioning work, including the approach April Dunford sets out in her book "Obviously Awesome", asks the same handful of questions in a fixed order. What would customers do if you did not exist? What do you have that those alternatives do not? What does that difference get the customer? Which customers care about that the most? Which category makes all of that obvious at a glance?
Answering those questions alone is slow, because each answer depends on the one before it, and owners tend to start at the category and work backward. The AI is good at holding the order, pushing back when an answer is vague, and writing three different versions of the result so you can compare them on one screen.
Plan on about an hour to gather material, a few minutes of AI time, an hour reading and cutting, and the rest of the afternoon turning the option you pick into your one page. Once the prompt and the material sit in one document, you can run it again whenever the business changes.
What you give the AI
Put all of this in one document before you open the chat. Label each block so the AI can tell your words from your customers' words.
- What you sell, one plain line per service: the work itself, not the marketing name for it.
- Your five best customers of the last year: for each, what kind of business or household they are, what they bought, and why you think they picked you.
- Two customers who were a poor fit: what they wanted, and why it went badly or never started.
- What customers would do without you: the competitor they mention, the big national option, a spreadsheet, a cousin, or simply putting it off.
- Customer words, copied exactly: five lines from reviews, thank-you notes, emails or calls, both the worries before they buy and the praise after.
- Facts you can prove: a guarantee you already honor, a credential, a turnaround you hit every week, a specialty nobody nearby offers, how long you have been doing this.
- What people call you now: the words on your homepage headline, your Google Business Profile category and your social bios.
- Claims you will not make: anything regulated, anything you cannot deliver on your worst week, and any word your industry restricts.
The alternatives block matters most. Positioning is always relative to something, and for many small businesses the real alternative is not the competitor across town but a spreadsheet, a cousin or putting it off. If you are unsure what your alternatives say about themselves, run competitor analysis first. If your customers fall into groups that want different things, customer segments will help you see them before you choose.
What comes back
Paste this prompt, then your material below it.
You are helping a small business decide its positioning and write its messaging.
Use only the material pasted below.
Do not invent facts, numbers, awards, customers or guarantees.
Work through these steps in order, and show your answer to each step.
1. Alternatives: list what the best customers would do if this business did not exist.
2. Differences: list what this business has that those alternatives do not.
Keep only differences supported by a line in the material, and quote that line.
3. Value: for each difference, say what it gets the customer, in the customer's words.
4. Best-fit customer: describe the customers who care most about that value,
by their situation, not by age or income.
5. Category: suggest the plain category name that makes the value obvious.
Then write three positioning options. Each option takes a different angle:
A. A familiar category, competing on one clear strength.
B. A narrower category for one specific kind of customer.
C. A different frame, comparing against the alternative most customers use instead.
For each option give:
- A positioning statement: For [customer] who [situation], [business] is the
[category] that [main value], unlike [alternative], because [proof].
- A one-line description a customer would understand.
- Three message points, each with the proof line from the material behind it.
- Words to use and words to avoid.
- Who this option would turn away, stated plainly.
Last, list anything you assumed that is not in the material, so it can be checked.What comes back is the method worked through in five short steps, then three options side by side, then a list of assumptions. Each option comes with its own statement, its one-liner, three points with proof, a short word list, and the customers it would lose.
That last line on each option is the most useful thing on the page. Positioning that turns no one away has not chosen anything. Seeing who each option would cost you makes the trade-off real.
Do not take the option the AI seems to prefer. It tends to favor whatever sounds most polished. Read all three, then read the five steps underneath them, because a weak step two means every option is resting on a difference that is not there. When you have picked, send one more message: "Write option B as one page: the positioning statement, the one-line description, the three message points with their proof lines, and the words to use and avoid." Put your chosen letter in place of B.
How to judge it
Read each option once and reject it if any of these show up.
- The difference is not a difference: "quality work", "great service" or "we care" are claims every competitor makes too.
- There is no proof line: a message point with nothing quoted under it, or a quoted line that does not say what the point claims.
- The customer is everyone: "small businesses" or "homeowners" is a market, not a customer.
- The category is invented jargon: a customer who hears it should know at once what you do and roughly what it costs.
- The alternative is a straw man: if the comparison describes a competitor worse than they really are, customers will notice.
- It promises more than you deliver every week: a fast turnaround you hit most of the time is not a message point.
- It reads like an ad: if you would not say the one-liner out loud to a neighbor, it is not finished.
Then do one test that takes a minute. Swap a competitor's name into each statement. If it still reads true, that option has not found your difference, and step two needs more material.
A good result is usually plain and a little dull on first read. The one-liner that makes a stranger say "so you do X for people like Y" is working.
What stays with you
The AI can lay out options. It cannot pick the customer you want more of, and that pick is the job. Choosing a best-fit customer means accepting that your words will speak less to some others, and only you know which work you want to be doing in two years.
The proof is yours as well. Every message point is a promise, and only you know whether you keep it on your worst week as well as your best. Health, legal, financial and insurance businesses often face rules about what they may claim, so check each point against those rules before it goes anywhere public.
The test is yours too. No AI can hear how a prospect reacts when you describe your business a new way on a call. A follow-up question means the words worked. A polite nod means they did not.
Last, the consistency is yours. Positioning works through repetition, and the hard part is using the same words on every page, every listing and every call for months, long after you are tired of hearing them.
Which kind of category to choose
The three options in the prompt map to a real choice. Pick the row that matches your situation.
| Your situation | Choose | Why | The risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Customers already search for what you do by a plain name | A familiar category | No one has to learn what you are | You compete with every business that uses the same name |
| One kind of customer gets far more from you than the rest | A narrower category | You become the obvious choice for that group | Other customers may assume you are not for them |
| Most customers would do nothing or do it themselves instead | A different frame | You compete with the real alternative, not the competitor | It takes more words to explain at first |
Most small businesses land on the first or second row. The third is worth it only when your material shows that doing nothing really is the main alternative.
An editorial example
This is an invented business, used only to show the job. Say you run a two-person bookkeeping practice in a mid-size city. Your five best customers turn out to be four restaurants and a food truck, and your two poor fits were a startup that wanted a finance strategist and a retailer that wanted inventory help. The customer lines include worries about making payroll and praise for understanding tip reporting without a long explanation.
Option A positions you as a local bookkeeper who answers the phone the same day. Option B positions you as a bookkeeper for restaurants and food businesses. Option C compares you with the shoebox of receipts the owner sorts on Sunday nights.
The swap test sinks option A, since any bookkeeper could claim it. Option B rests on real proof lines and would turn away the retailer, which is a cost you can accept. You choose B, and the message sheet gives you three points about payroll, tip reporting and month-end numbers, each with a customer line behind it.
That is where the example stops. Nothing in it is a real business or a real outcome.
Where it goes next
The positioning page is the source every other piece of copy draws from. Next, turn it into one sentence with the value proposition job, then carry it onto your homepage and service pages with website copy. If you need more customer words before you run the prompt, our customer pain points generator is a quick start. Keep all three options in the document, because the ones you passed on are a record of what you decided not to be.
Of every job on this list, social media is the one that comes back every week, and Boomp is software that does that one for you. See ten posts made from your website, free
