What a Positioning Audit Revealed About Irish SME Marketing
What a Positioning Audit Revealed About Irish SME Marketing
Four weeks ago I attended the National Construction Summit in Dublin. Over the course of the day, I walked around the exhibition floor and one thing that struck me about the booths is that many of them seemed to be different colours of the same message. They talked about quality, experience, partnerships but they didn't differentiate themselves enough to be memorable.
If you had removed the company names from the booths, you could not have matched a pitch to its owner. When you're in a competitve market, that is a significant commercial problem that room probably did not realise they had it.
I left the summit and started building a tool that could help me get a better view of the problem..
The Foundation of an Audit Tool
My initial instinct was to take a sample of construction companies in Ireland, look at their public communications, and see whether the pattern I had observed at the summit showed up in their marketing too.
It did. But the moment I started reviewing the results, I realised a quick assessment was not enough. What I was seeing was a positioning problem. Positioning is specific enough, and misunderstood enough, that I needed to build something more structured if I wanted to diagnose it reliably.
I realised that I needed to break down what positioning is into its defining component parts. What does positioning actually mean? What does good look like versus adequate versus absent? How could I put those criteria into a tool that produces consistent, defensible assessments across different companies and sectors?
Using Public Information as The Starting Point
The first version of the tool that I built works exclusively from publicly available information: websites, LinkedIn profiles, case studies, published content.
When a prospective buyer researches a company, this is what they see. They have not spoken to anyone. They have not received a proposal. They form their initial impression from whatever is publicly visible, and that impression determines whether they make contact at all.
If your positioning is unclear to a stranger reading your website, they will never know if you are the right company for their needs. So being able to assess where you stand in an invaluable resource.
The Framework
The tool scores companies across seven dimensions of positioning maturity. Each dimension measures something a prospective buyer evaluates when deciding whether to engage with a firm opr not.
Those seven dimensions sit within two layers, and they are quite different from each other. The first layer covers strategic clarity: do you know who you are talking to, can you articulate the value you deliver, and can you give someone a credible reason to choose you rather than an alternative? The second layer covers execution: are you communicating your message clearly and consistently across all your channels, do you have a recognisable voice, and can you support your claims with real evidence?
A company can score well on execution and poorly on strategy. That means they are communicating a poorly defined message clearly and consistently. The solution is entirely different from that of a company with good strategic thinking that is failing to express it. The tool is designed to tell the difference.
I will write a separate post on the framework in more detail, covering the scoring logic, the rubrics, and the design decisions behind it.
Insights From the Initial Testing
I have now run the tool across 16 companies in the Irish construction sector and below are some of the insights I dervied from this exercise.
Messaging consistency was the strongest area on average. Most companies, once they settle on a way of describing themselves, repeat it reliably across their channels. That has value. But consistency without clarity is just repeating an underdeveloped message more efficiently.
Differentiation was the weakest area by a significant margin. Most companies describe what they do. Very few can articulate why someone should choose them specifically. This is a big strategic problem. The message is vague because the underlying thinking has not been done clearly enough to produce a sharp one.
To cite one example, one specialist contractor scored strongly in their messaging consistency: a clear narrative, used with evident intention across all their channels. But their proof and credibility scored very low. They didn't name any specific project outcomes, or published case studies. Basically, they had no specifics to support the claims they were making. The story was coherent but not backed up by evidence. A prospective buyer would have no way to verify that the company could do what it said.
That gap between what a company claims and what it can demonstrate is one of the most common findings.
Where I Am Now
The tool works. It produces assessments that are structured, consistent, and specific enough to be actionable. But it is still in active development, and the most useful thing I can do at this stage is test it against companies who are willing to engage seriously with what it surfaces.
I am looking to speak with owners, managing directors, and commercial leaders at Irish SMEs who have a sense that their external communications are not doing the job they should. Companies where the website, the LinkedIn presence, and the pitch are each telling a slightly different story, or where the business has evolved but the messaging has not kept pace.
The conversation I have in mind is a diagnostic one. I want to understand your situation, run the assessment, and find out whether what the tool surfaces is genuinely useful to you, and where it falls short.
If that sounds relevant to where you are, get in touch.
Three Questions Worth Answering About Positioning
If you are a business owner reading this, I want to leave you with three questions that get to the core of positioning.
Who, specifically, are you talking to? Not "SMEs" or "construction companies" or "professional services firms." Who is the person sitting across the table? What is their role? What problem keeps them awake? What does success look like for them in six months?
What specific outcome do you deliver for that specific person? Not quality, not experience, not dedication. A tangible, describable result. Something they can measure or observe.
What evidence do you have? Even if you have been in business for only a few months and only have a couple of customers, you have real data, real outcomes. You can use it to back up your claims
If you can answer all three clearly, you have the foundation of a positioning statement. If you cannot, that is the gap. And it is the most expensive gap in your business, even if it does not appear anywhere on your P&L.
About This Post
Octavio is a marketing consultant and coach working with SME founders and commercial leaders on positioning, B2B lead generation, and marketing strategy. The construction sector audit referenced in this post covered 16 Irish SMEs and was conducted in early 2026 using publicly available website and digital content.
If you want to understand where your positioning sits, I run a free 30-minute diagnostic.