There are 20 common positioning mistakes even the best experts make. I see these every day. Coaches, consultants, founders of incredible businesses. Putting a ceiling on their revenue, impact, and potential. And it needs to stop.

I help experts get known for their work through my software company, Coachvox . The same mistakes come up again and again, in businesses with happy clients and years of results behind them.

Every one of them makes your marketing work harder than it needs to, and every one of them is fixable . Here are the 20, grouped by category, with the fix for each.

The biggest positioning mistakes experts make, and how to fix them

You cannot answer “So what do you actually help people with?” You describe yourself when someone asks who your dream client is. Your niche is “ambitious people who want more from life”. Your offer is for founders, executives, experts, creators, consultants and anyone going through a transition.

Stop being so general. Instead, niche right down to one person, and give them a name. Close your eyes and picture your absolute dream client. The one where, if you had 10, 100, or 1,000 of them, you’d have the best business ever, and you’d be excited to make a difference for them every single day. Specify their job title, department, where they live, and their approximate age. Understand their biggest fears, strongest beliefs, and the goals they’re not sure they’ll ever achieve. Write everything for them.

You start posting every day before deciding what you want to be known for. You think you need better hooks, but people still don’t know what you sell. You create your 20th content pillar because choosing one thing feels restrictive. Your LinkedIn post gets 100,000 views and nobody knows why they should hire you.

Showing up daily is the right instinct. Decide what you want people to associate with your name first. Daily posting multiplies whatever message you give it. A hook gets you a few seconds, and your profile decides what happens next. Pick the topics your dream client asks about most and let the rest go. When a post takes off, anyone who clicks through should see who you help and how to work with you at a glance.

Your homepage could belong to 5,000 other experts. You spend $10,000 on branding before deciding what the brand means. Your colours, fonts and logo are excellent, but what do they stand for?

Cover your logo and read your homepage. If another expert could publish it unchanged, rewrite it around your method and the results only your clients have had. Colors and fonts make a clear message look good. Decide the message first. Then the designer has something to build.

Your referrals and testimonials

Your past clients love you but cannot describe you. Your testimonials say “She’s brilliant” and nothing about what changed. Your referrals show up saying, “Sarah told me to speak to you, but I’m not totally sure why.”

Your happiest clients want to recommend you. So give them the words to use. At the end of your time together, tell them the one sentence you want them to use when they mention you. When you collect testimonials, ask what was happening before, what changed, and how quickly. Send your best referrers a short note with who you help and the moment to introduce you.

Your leads and sales calls

Inbound leads finally come in and you were too vague, so every single one is wrong. You start discovery calls with 25 minutes of explaining what you do. People no-show all the time because you didn’t send them anything before the discovery call.

Read the enquiries back, see what each person thought you offered, and change the words that brought them in. Then do the explaining before the call, with a page or a short video about who you help and how you work. The buyer turns up already understanding your offer. They’re nearly ready to buy.

Your answer to “How much does it cost?” begins with “It depends”. Your offer has 12 modules, 4 bonuses, 2 additional extras, and no obvious outcome. Your offer menu looks like a Cheesecake Factory menu.

Don’t do this. Instead, pick a starting price and say it. A number tells the buyer you have done this many times, and “it depends” tells them to expect a negotiation. Buyers pay for the result, so lead with it in one sentence and let the modules become the detail they read once they are interested. Every option you add is another decision for the buyer. Cut the menu to the offers that get the best results, and make one of them the obvious choice.

Your lead magnets and email list

Your freebie solves a different problem from your paid offer. 700 people download your lead magnet, but it doesn’t solve a commercial problem so none of them buy. You’re never really sure what to send your email list. Your emails aren’t good enough to be forwarded, and your list doesn’t grow.

Your lead magnet is the first step of your paid offer. Build it around the first problem your paying clients ask you to solve. Those 700 people told you what they want. Email them the next step, and keep changing the lead magnet until the people downloading it are the people who buy.

How to fix the positioning mistakes even the best experts make

Pick the mistake that felt most familiar and fix it this week. Then the next one. When you finally nail your positioning, every part of your business becomes easy. You finally make the sales you were always destined to make.

Join my free workshop to finally become in-demand as an expert.