Be careful with the words you use to position your business.

A simple word choice could change your message entirely. Ironically, the most misused word in business is one that businesses want to associate with the most often—the BEST. Stating you’re the best may seem like a pretty powerful claim, but it’s actually quite vague.

Allow me to demonstrate. When you resort to using the word ‘best’ as your positioning, you will disappoint many people.

What comes to mind when a website claims they’ll give you the best vacation ever? How about the best realtor? Best podcast? Best Thai food? Try picturing each of these things in your head. What do you see? If I asked 100 people to picture this, I would get at least 50 different answers. The point is my standard and your standard of the best vacation, or anything else that claims to be the best in their category, are different.

Instead of using the word best to promote your brand, how can you get more descriptive about your value proposition? Let’s take the above examples and refine them as an exercise.

Let’s take the best vacation as our first example. For those travelling with family, or as couples, or enjoying some Me Time travelling solo, the best vacation means drastically different things.

THE BEST VACATION

For parents with young children, the best vacation may be one where there’s an all-inclusive beachfront resort with daycare for the children or lots of family-friendly activities that relieve them from trip planning. Couples may want destinations where they can experience vibrant city life, hang out at instagrammable hip cafes, and cycle around the city. If you’re travelling solo, destinations where you feel safe wandering the streets and non-honeymoon spots might be on your list.

THE BEST REALTOR

How about the best realtor? Let’s start by considering what you would look for in a realtor that meets your standard of being the best. Your requirement might be that they are very detail-oriented, and they spend hours reviewing the strata meeting minutes with you to ensure you have a complete picture of the ongoing home ownership costs. For me, a key trait my ‘best’ realtor should have would be first access to the corner units in new residential presale projects. Real estate investors may require that their ‘best’ realtor has the expertise to help them figure out the financial structure they need to leverage and own multiple properties. Do you see how these traits describe very different people? Depending on the client's needs, the ‘best’ realtor comes in many different shapes and sizes.

THE BEST PODCAST

When you hear your friends rave about their favourite podcast, and you ask them why they think it’s the best, they might say…well, the host does all their research, so each episode is very informative, or, they might love the dynamic and chemistry between the podcasts hosts; it might be that the podcast has a super exciting lineup of guest speakers each season. Again, simply claiming it’s the best isn’t specific enough.

Dig deeper the next time you want to state your business offers the best product or service. What do you really want to tell prospective clients or customers when you say you’re the best? Is it that you deliver on time and budget? Or are you the top value choice? Or do you have the highest rating in the industry on Google? Using the word best by itself is lazy positioning. Your brand deserves more of an intellectual investment from you.