Repositioning the Agency

Who is Optimist?

What makes us unique?

These are questions that we wrestled with over the last year.

While we’ve always had an element of differentiation — a focus on strategic growth rather than content output — we have, “kept our options open,” in terms of the work we did and for which types of clients.

In other words, we didn’t really define our positioning.

As a, “full-service content marketing agency,” people came to us with a variety of (evolving) needs and we did our best to flex and accommodate.

Since we have a team of great writers and designers, we rolled with most client requests that included these two basic ingredients—even if we weren’t truly experts at that kind of work.

But this led to the “menu problem” I described in Part 3.

We didn’t really have a menu.

We made everything to order—every time.

And I realized three important things:

1. This is impossible to document and refine
2. It creates chaos and adds unnecessary stress for our team
3. It leads to mediocre output and poor outcomes for some clients

In our desire to help, we actually did a disservice to some of our clients. And—perhaps more importantly—we turned our skilled team into line cooks instead of chefs. (Okay, I’m done with the restaurant analogy now.)

So we need to establish more concrete positioning that ties together our big-picture goals:

• Achieving a reasonable level of productization
• Building and supporting a world-class team
• Delivering the highest quality work for every single client

To do this, we took both a top-down and a bottoms-up look our business and really tried to evaluate our strengths.

Top-Down Analysis: Making a Data-Driven Decision

First, we did a deep-dive analysis of all of our current and former clients.

We manually compiled every client we’ve worked with since starting the company (about 60 in total) and analyzed them across 20+ dimensions.

Some of the attributes we included:

• Length of our engagement
• Budget
• Funding
• Business stage
• Business type/GTM strategy
• Industry or vertical
• Team structure
• Workflow and process
• Business outcomes from our work
• Reason for churning (if applicable)

We wanted to answer a few key questions:

• Which clients stuck with us the longest and/or represented the most revenue for us?
• Which clients were clearly not a fit? (And what red flags could we identify earlier on?)
• Which types of clients did we most consistently deliver strong business results for?

This is the “science” part of positioning. Because, at the end of the day, we can plant a flag in the ground and say anything we want about what we can do or who we serve. But the data doesn’t lie.

The data tell us who we actually serve best and which customers are, in fact, best for our bottom line and our business growth.

Using this data, we could see some clear patterns across our current and former clients.

Most or all of the best-fit, most-profitable engagements:

• Come to us after raising $10mm+ in Series A funding
• Invest ~$10k-12k+ per month
• Plug us in at the Marketing Director/VP/CMO level
• Focused on SEO and organic growth

So this told us part of the story. We knew, statistically, where we have the most success.

But what about the work itself? What about the team? What makes this work enjoyable and rewarding for them?

That’s what we looked at next.

Bottoms-Up Analysis: Charting The Course

I asked the team to come to our last virtual retreat ready to answer one question:

What can we be the best in the world at?

Inspired by the book Good to Great and the Hedgehog Concept, I really wanted to refine the vision for Optimist. I wanted to take us from being a “content marketing agency” in a sea of other agencies to a more specific and precise type of partner that serves a specific and precise type of client.

The team had some strong opinions about how and when they do their best work and what our agency could do better than anyone else.

Some highlights include:

• Clients who trust us as experts
• Focus on long-term results
• Creative control without significant creative review

This is the “art” of positioning. It’s the blue-ocean part where the team can dream big and think deeply about the work they do—and then put some parameters around what makes that work better or more fulfilling than other types of work.

It’s the idealized version of what we want to be if we could be anything.

Then we overlay that vision with the reality of the data and we see where the two intersect.

This points toward our defensible position as a business.

Interestingly, these points both described an ideal client working relationship and described when we were most successful. When we compared the two, it was clear. We consistently delivered the best results and had the fewest challenges when working with clients who gave us full or nearly full creative control and ownership over their entire content marketing strategy.

To boot, we had some data to back up which kinds of clients generally fit that bill.

Synthesizing Our New Positioning

Now we have to bring together the findings from both parts of our analysis and define exactly how we want to position our business.

We do X for Y but not Z.

We can break this down into three main components.

First, our clients:

• ~Series A ($10mm+ funding) with 6-12 months runway to scale organic as a channel
• Product-led company with “simple” sales cycle involving fewer stakeholders
• Demonstrable opportunity to use SEO to drive business growth

Second, our focus:

• Focus on growth through organic search (SEO) versus other channels (e.g., social)
• Focus on acquisition — driving leads, sales, or revenue directly from content and SEO
• Ability to track and attribute conversions/sales/revenue from content (e.g., simple sales funnel)

Third, our relationship:

• Engaged directly with an executive; ownership over strategy and day-to-day execution
• 1-2 points of contact or stakeholders
• View us squarely as an expert, strategic partner that drives business growth (not a service vendor who makes content)

I was pretty thrilled with these findings.

Not only did it provide us with a lot of clarity about how we should engage with clients and which clients may be the best fit for our team, but it provided a really clear and defensible position.

Focusing on acquisition gives us a clear path to calculating ROI and allows us to focus on work that’s both high value and high margin.

Best of all, we have a track record of delivering at this level when we have clients that fit into our ideal customer profile.

So, from this, our new positioning was born:

Optimist builds organic growth engines for product-led companies.

Positioning is a Business Strategy

Of course, defining this vision is only the first step. We need to now focus on communicating this externally and tightening up all of our internal systems, processes, and workflows.

But I think I can speak for the team when I say that this instilled a new level of clarity and focus for our business. We were able to see—immediately—which clients, deliverables, goals, and activities fit into this vision and which ones did not.

We defined this vision for Optimist in November of this year and we immediately took steps to start charting our new course.

In particular, we parted ways with one of our largest clients.

There were some challenges in working with this client over the preceding months and refining our positioning helped us both to understand why we were experiencing so much friction and, unfortunately, that it was more systemic than situational. They were not a fit for us.

Positioning and branding can sometimes become soft-minded ideas, especially for small companies. They feel like buzzwords and superfluous versions of simpler concepts.

But I’m a believer in the power of positioning—if it’s executed fully.

Positioning isn’t just something you write down in a corporate mission statement.

It’s a business strategy.

Your position is like a north star that guides and informs your entire business, from your pricing, marketing, and branding down to your operations, hiring, and execution.

Your positioning defines what you do as a business.

More importantly, it defines what you don’t do as a business.

If you remember, this is exactly what we set out to define for Optimist when I explained the “menu problem” in part 3. We needed a clear definition of what we do—what we can do well—and what don’t do as a company.

This is why our positioning is so important.

We want our business to occupy a specific position in the market,. Everything we do must be analyzed through that lens. We must be prepared to make sacrifices to preserve that position.

If your position is a premium product or service, then you likely focus on high-quality materials, minimalist design, and high-touch service.

But premium brands don’t usually offer discounts. They don’t spin out low-quality versions of their premium offering. They don’t try to compete on price.

As we move forward, we’ll have to continue to make these kinds of difficult decisions.

And, frankly, we’ll need to be much more judicious about how we qualify and take on new client work. This new positioning only works if we’re willing to walk away from revenue when it’s not a fit. I need to be dedicated to upholding this position—even when it’s difficult or inconvenient.

Otherwise, we’ll end up right back where we were.

Turning Down Clients

There’s a downside to positioning.

We’ve drawn a line in the sand. We’ve defined exactly the types of clients that we want to serve, the type of work that we want to do, and the way we want the working relationship to function. This means that we’re no longer a content marketing agency for the masses—we’re not for everyone.

With that, we’ll need to turn down clients who aren’t a fit.

We’ll need to say “no” a lot more often.

At first blush, this is absolutely terrifying. I’ve spent the last 5 years chasing down leads and fighting hard for every dollar of revenue. The thought of being “picky” about our clients feels like an incredibly stupid move—even if I know, logically, that it will benefit us in the long term.

Here, again, is where perspective comes into play.

Am I Tyler, The Founder of Optimist?

Or am I Tyler, The Entrepreneur?

As Tyler, the founder of Optimist, I see lost revenue and risk. I see money left on the table.

But as Tyler, the entrepreneur, I see opportunity.

If there are people knocking on our door who we can’t serve well, then there’s a huge opportunity to connect those companies to other partners who are a better fit.

As I mentioned in the first post of this year, I feel like I’ve grown a healthier sense of perspective this year. And one big part of that is recognizing that while Optimist may be a critical part of my life, it is not—and should not be—my entire identity.

I am an entrepreneur. I enjoy identifying problems and solving them.

Optimist is a specific tool that solves a specific problem for specific people. But it’s not the only tool.

Rather than trying to fix everything with the “Optimist hammer”, so to speak, I have an opportunity to simply add new tools to my belt—build new businesses that are better suited for solving problems that Optimist doesn’t solve well.

Interestingly, this goes hand-in-hand with repositioning Optimist.

As we turn down work that’s not ideal, the byproduct is an opportunity to build something that would better serve those customers.