Well, if you haven't, as soon as you look at this, you'll never be able to unsee it. The story goes that in 1994, a guy named Lindon Leader from Landor Associates came up with a custom typeface that highlighted FedEx's mission of “getting from point A to point B reliably with speed & precision.”

Instead of building an arrow logo, Leader created the arrow in the negative space. Above, you can see I highlighted the arrow in white, but what's truly remarkable is how simple this is. This creates real impact by what's not present. (And if you hadn't seen it before, you will never not be able to see the arrow in the logo.)

No. That would be silly. What I am going to tell you about how to think about negative space in your agency positioning…

I know. I can hear the collective groans on the newsletter list since we are going to talk about positioning again. But it's deeper than positioning because this comes right down to the reason why you exist as an agency.

Knowing what is negative space allows you to build more effectively on the space that you do occupy. And the space that you leave can tell a story about what you do well.

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One of my Agency Studio clients is working hard to build his agency into a particular niche & he got an out-of-niche referral from an existing client.

He wanted to know if he should take this opportunity…he was pretty sure that I was going to say no because it wasn't building on his “in-niche” expertise and authority.

And sure, if I were a purist and an absolutist, I would have said just that. But when you are growing into revenue stability, there is no such thing as absolute or totally pure.

Targeting a niche is a time-honored methodology. Most people think it has to do with becoming the “go to” resource in a particular niche, but the world is way too big for anything to become the “go to”. The the real reason why I want my early-stage agency owners (that’s the Agency Studio crowd - those under $50,000 a month) to focus on a niche is so that they have to learn about fewer things. When you make your world smaller. You have a much more focused opportunity to get good and efficient at what you do…

It’s really simple, this agency owner isn't the kind of person to not help the friend of a client. This agency owner works with his clients, not for months or quarters, but years. His longest tenured client is approaching a decade with him.

This agency is developing a focus on a very narrow market that this agency owner is really, really passionate about. There aren't too many folks who are as narrowly niched, and his deep understanding of the needs of his clients and of the audience his clients sell to is going to yield enormous positive results for him.

As a practitioner, this agency-owner is terrific. He knows his stuff, and he can generate results. But his true superpower is the depth of the relationships he is able to create with his clients.

They trust and appreciate him. They rely on him.

His clients become friends. The companies he serves become as real and dear to him as his own. To be honest, this agency owner has never truly understood the value that he brings to his clients, and that's why he has yet to achieve the success that he deserves.

He has almost criminally under-priced for years - and that creates valuable white space on which he now understands he shouldn’t build into.

He believes intently that the small businesses he works with get a good value. He, too, is a small business that understands how precious each dollar is… So, he goes above and beyond to create extraordinary value.

He wants his clients to feel taken care of and protected from that wild changes in digital marketing.

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His negative space is thinking of his agency as transactional. More than his niche, his relationship-focused approach is what defines the space his agency occupies.

This is why typical spray-and-pray cold email has never felt right. Nor, in fact, has generating leads through ads, because they are both one-to-many. There is no relationship to base the initial discussion or engagement on.

His super-power isn't that he is a paid media wizard? His superpower is understanding how important his clients' businesses are to them. He, in turn, adopts an aggressive stance in providing them with service, insight, and value.

Our custom type-face friend, Linden, created an incredible statement by what he “left out” of Federal Express’ logo. The message is fully encapsulated by where the design ISN’T. My client is doing the same.

By focusing on his chosen niche, over time, he creates a stronger grip on what that slice of the universe needs in order to succeed. But even his narrow niche is full of potential clients and brands that won't or can't appreciate his relationship and service super power.

By placing most of the commercial universe outside of his niche, you would think that his world would be small enough. But truly, a target market is indeed very narrow. Agencies don't need hundreds of thousands, or tens of thousands, or even thousands of clients. Agencies almost always max out somewhere under 1000 clients, and the vast majority of agencies can only handle two or three dozen clients at a time.

When we add a corroborating negative space to his ICP, which is avoidance of a traditional commercial relationship where there is no intimacy or trust or connection, we’ve built a robust and solid foundational space on which he can build.

His negative space is so well defined that he now has the freedom to say yes to opportunities that might slip outside of his targeted niche, because they are so deeply and clearly perfect for his connectional need. His niche becomes a preference, but his need to connect with his clients and be of service becomes an operational mandate.

Previously, I thought that he was a very good service provider who didn't understand his true value. But now that I've been able to see the things that matter to him in truly high relief, his negative space is so clearly expressed that his commercial niche is a translucent overlay that reveals the truest qualities of his agency & and him.

No, but for this agency owner, the intimacy matters. He won't be able to do a good job if the relationship is entirely transactional and only based on the latest Google Shopping report.

Realizing his need for connection has allowed us to prioritize the elements of an MDC - most desirable client (that’s a concept I unleashed way back in AIC #6 - 171 issues ago!) so that he has the best chance at success. Here is the prioritized list:

by allowing a cross-dimensional understanding of what this agency owner needs to bring his best self to work every day, the traditional positioning concepts of niche and revenue band and complexity have started to fall by the wayside. they are not unimportant, but this agency owner has revealed to me (and I think, probably to themselves) what makes them truly effective.

We often think about positioning and messaging and all of that stuff as structures that we build that will be attractive to the market. It's as if positioning was made of shiny fish lures that will make the fattest large-mouth bass swim your way.

Positioning (and all of the downstream elements of it - website, marketing, lead gen, sales process, closing, handoff and service, etc., etc.) isn't just for the purposes of gathering attention. Positioning is about maximizing the fit both for the client and the agency.

Positioning & it’s associated negative space is how you define your maximum impact.

A few months ago, I went on Adam O'Leary's Scale With Partners podcast and did a live positioning teardown. It was terrific - I had a blast.

I had a chance to catch up with Adam earlier this week, and I asked him how his revamped positioning is working. He said:

This kind of positioning work is at the heart of DemandOS, and I know from all of the clients that have gone through the DemandOS process that things change dramatically. One client said, “the way we talk about what we do is so much more powerful than it used to be…referrals and sales calls are so much more productive now.”

I am trying to abstract the best of the process into something that is self-service and an agency can run through a question driven interview agent that helps unearth higher-impact messaging for you.

This is still in beta (maybe alpha) but I’d love to run 5 agencies through the process for free (in exchange for a testimonial or maybe World Series tickets or something). If interested, please respond to this email.

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