The ladder in your buyer's head
What Ries & Trout taught me about positioning.
In this week’s Copy THIS, I’m pulling back the curtain on what positioning work actually looks like in real life: one messy client call, one “top 10” argument, and the ladder framework I use to turn vague ambition into a position the market can remember.
A few weeks ago, I was on a Google Meet with a brand strategy client: three partners running a digital marketing agency.
As they were debating back and forth the meaning of their vision statement, I was staring at my own video tile thinking: Is that going to scar?
Because less than 24 hours earlier, I’d walked into a door so hard I literally split my forehead open.
~24 hours earlier~
I’m standing at a heavy fire door that leads to our car stacker, peering through the little window like a meerkat.
I can’t see our car.
“Maybe we parked on the street,” I think, as I open the door… while still trying to look through the window… while also stepping forward to walk through the door.
The edge of the door catches me square in the forehead and I go down like a sack of shit.
My husband’s behind me, with the most concerned voice I’ve ever heard him use: “Are you okay?!”
I pull my head away.
Blood.
But my first thought isn’t medical. It’s cosmetic.
“My face is ruined!”
“What will I do for LinkedIn selfies now?!”
There’s an elevator technician nearby, pretending not to listen, while my husband reassures me: “It’s not that bad.”
“I look like Temu Harry Potter!”
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m a child!”
Anyway.
Back to the call:
One of the partners says, completely seriously:
“We want to be recognised as a top 10 agency.”
Another fires back:
“Top 10 of what?”
And now we’re not doing brand strategy. We’re playing ping-pong.
One person wants reputation and thought leadership. The other wants something practical they can actually use - not “fluffy corporate wank.”
I selflessly drag my eyes away from my own face and cut in:
“Forget ‘top 10.’ Picture a ladder.”
If I say “banks,” you can probably name a few automatically.
If you’re in Australia like me: Commonwealth, NAB, ANZ, maybe Westpac. If you’re in the UK: probably HSBC and Santander.
You get the idea.
But notice what your brain is doing:
You’re not just naming banks.
You’re ranking them.
Like rungs on a ladder 🪜
It can take a lot of time (and an insane amount of money) for a brand to get a rung that high… which is why it’s brutally hard for a new contender to come in and simply “out-bank” the existing banks.
But one qualifier can change everything
“Business banks”
“Regional banks”
“Online-only banks”
Suddenly the names in your head shuffle. New brands appear. Others disappear.
It’s not just different rungs. It’s a totally new ladder.
And notice what’s happening here: your brain can’t rank anything in isolation.
A ladder only exists when there are multiple players on it.
Which is why positioning is always a two-person game.
No second player, no ladder.
Just you yelling “top 10!” into the void.
The question the agency needed to ask was: top 10 on which ladder… and compared to who?
This is particularly important if you’re a small business, and especially important if you’re in an oversaturated market like banking or digital marketing.
Because once a brand owns a rung on the ladder, it’s bloody hard to dislodge them.
Not always because they’re better.
Because the audience has already made up their mind.
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In the book Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind by Al Ries and Jack Trout, the authors explain:
“The average person cannot tolerate being told he or she is wrong. Mind-changing is the road to advertising disaster.”
Bad news if your “strategy” (or your client’s strategy) is to produce copy that argues people into a new belief.
That’s not positioning.
That’s trying to win a debate in someone else’s head.
And it’s exactly why that call got stuck on “top 10.”
Digital marketing is an established category. The ladder has already been built and all the top rungs are already taken.
So we’ve got two moves:
1. Own your rung
You not only accept reality, you capitalise on it.
This is why the famous Avis “We try harder” campaign worked so well.
It doesn’t ask the buyer to rewrite the ladder. It positions them against Hertz (the category leader).
It makes a tidy comparison the market can believe.
2. Build a new ladder
If the main ladder is un-winnable, you don’t climb harder.
You start a new one.
You establish a position in your buyer’s head that you can own.
For my agency client, option 1 wasn’t the right play.
So we went with option 2.
Side note: Can a brand muscle its way to the top of the main ladder?
Sure. If you’re the first.
“The easy way to get into a person’s mind is to be first.”
And once you’re first, you’re hard to move:
“The first person, the first mountain, the first company to occupy the position in the mind is going to be awfully hard to dislodge.”
Outside of that?
Maybe. If you’ve got years, budget, and a tolerance for pain.
Most small business don’t. Even Avis couldn’t.
So don’t build your strategy on the hardest mode.
But how do you build a new ladder?
Ries and Trout again:
“In the communication jungle out there, the only hope to score big is to be selective, to concentrate on narrow targets, to practice segmentation. In a word, ‘positioning.’”
Put another way:
Niching down.
This is what a lot of people get wrong about niching. They think it shrinks ambition.
But it’s really about creating a new ladder you can lead.
It’s about using what’s already inside your buyer’s mind to your advantage.
We live in an over-communicated world. People skim. They shortcut. They don’t want homework just to understand what you do.
So if you’re not clear on who you’re writing to, what problem you solve, and what you’re not, people won’t disagree…
They’ll just leave.
Or, as another line from Positioning puts it:
“When you try to be everything, you wind up being nothing.”
Real talk: Your girl needs a little commitment.
In 2026, you won’t be able to read content this good unless you’re subscribed.
Four ways to niche (aka: four ways to build a new ladder)
For who (the customer)
For when (the situation)
For what (the problem)
Without what (the trade-off)
And if you’re tempted to keep it broad, Ries and Trout will slap your hand:
“Sometimes you can want too much. You can want to own a position that’s too broad. A position that can’t be established in the prospect’s mind.”
Then they tell you what to do instead:
“Simplify the message, and then simplify it some more if you want to make a long-lasting impression.”
A quick note on market sophistication
This subject is honestly a whole-nother-post. But for context, market sophistication is basically:
How many ladders already exist in your buyer’s head?
In a new category, there’s barely a ladder yet.
In an established category there’s dozens of ladders, which is why having a clear niche is so bloody important.
Now, before you get excited this does not mean you sprint off and invent a new category for the fun of it.
If you introduce something truly new, it still needs to be positioned against something familiar so the brain can place it.
Ries and Trout’s example is the first automobile being called a “horseless carriage.”
A modern example: Uber didn’t just create the “ride share” category. It positioned itself against taxis. Airbnb positioned itself against hotels.
The brain wants a reference point.
A quick framework you can use:
Identify the category
What ladder does your brand (or the one you’re writing for) land on?
Name the category leaders (your “second player”)
Don’t start with “banks.” Start with the real ladder you’re trying to win.
For example: “online-only banks.”
Then name the leaders of that ladder.
Decide your move
Own a rung, or
Start a new ladder
Craft a simple contrast sentence
“We’re the [CATEGORY] for [PERSON] who want [RESULT], not [DEFAULT OPTION].”
Contrary to what a lot of social media gurus will tell you, this doesn’t have to become your LinkedIn headline.
It’s usually an internal-only statement. Your public headline can be punchier.
Test it with your audience
Does it resonate?
Does it make sense?
Do they understand how it solves their problem?
If positioning is the rung they put you on, messaging is how you own it.
So many businesses skip straight to:
Rebuilding a website
Changing a tagline
Editing a landing page
…without ever confirming what rung the market has already put them on.
In communication, as in architecture, less is more. You have to sharpen your message to cut into the mind. You have to jettison the ambiguities, concentrate on the perceptions of the prospect. Not the reality of the product.
Which is why I keep banging on about surveying your audience (or at least researching them).
Speaking of surveys…
Last week, I mentioned I’m building out new offers - with one being on Messaging Mastery.
Not: “steal my template to write better copy.”
More like:
Understand what your audience already believes
Choose the ladder you actually want to own
Stop sounding like every other option in your category
Write the words that make the right people think: “Oh. This is for me.”
It’s not ready yet.
But in 2026, it will be.
And if you think these insights are good, you’ll bloody love what comes next.
So if you haven’t filled it out yet, here it is again:
Anyone who fills it out will be on the list for exclusive discounts once I launch 😏
The Avis example is such a clean case study of owning your rung instead of fighting uphill. I've seen so many brands waste budget trying to argue their way into a top spot when there's a much smarter move available. The bit about market sophistication is especially useful because people underestimate how many invisible ladders are alreadyin the buyers head. I worked with a SaaS client once who kept saying they wanted to be "the best CRM" until we reframed it as "best CRM for remote teams under 50 people." Suddenly the positioning made sense and stopped sounding generic.