Positioning your business in Self Determination Theory
- Lucy
- Sep 2, 2025
- 5 min read
Updated: May 22
Most brands try to position their business around their literal location in their industry. Looking at things like market share, or a particular group of target customers they can really capture the attention of. These are great starting points for approaching positioning literally. But in order to be successful, you need to go deeper than that to truly understand the success behind the strategy.
And in my opinion, the best way to do this is through psychology.
Self Determination Theory (SDT) was initially developed by psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan in the 1970s’. It’s undoubtedly one of the most studied frameworks of human motivation, and is one of the few theories that have actually stuck with me from my A-level psychology classes over 10 years ago.
To put it simply, the framework is based around the idea that extrinsic rewards (like money or praise) can actually reduce intrinsic motivation. Instead, what truly sustains engagement and loyalty is the satisfaction of three universal psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
Like all good frameworks, this can directly apply to how you build, run, and position a business.
Why use SDT in business?
As I’ve hopefully hammered in from my other articles, customers aren’t buying into your products or services. They’re buying into feelings; experiences; stories that align with who they want to be. But SDT can help explain to us why they’re doing that.
When people feel a sense of choice, capability, and belonging, they are naturally more motivated and committed. But when those needs are blocked, no amount of discounts or loyalty schemes can bridge that gap.
This same logic applies to founders as well as their customers. You can’t build a business that feels sustainable if it undermines your own sense of autonomy, competence, or relatedness. Which is why businesses often stall, because the founder isn’t meeting their own needs and becomes suffocated rather than energised.
Like this article? I’d love it if you subscribed!
Autonomy is all about feeling that your actions are freely chosen and not dictated by external pressures. Humans ultimately want to feel in control.
In business, autonomy plays out in two directions:
· Customers: Giving them agency. Nobody enjoys pushy sales tactics or manipulative design. Which is why user choice, personalisation, and transparency all matter.
· Founders: Aligning your offers and processes with your own values. If you’re building a business that forces you into things you don’t enjoy or believe in, your motivation will collapse and your business will fail (to put it bluntly).
Research consistently shows that autonomy-supportive environments lead to greater persistence, creativity, and satisfaction (Ryan & Deci, 2017). In a commercial settings, this is visible in how people flock to the brands that do respect their decision making. Apples ‘think different’ campaign is a great example of this, where it fully hands over autonomy to the user.
Supporting autonomy can simply look like offering coaching clients multiple ways to give feedback to you (call; form; email). So this doesn’t have to be complicated.
Competence is around making things seem achievable.
How you define achievable should be flexed depending on the task at hand however. For example if you’re designing a website checkout, that needs to be simple and easy for people to use. If you’re offering coaching, you need to find the right balance of pushing people to the edge of their ability, so it’s challenging, but something they can achieve. And then celebrating that achievement.
When competence is supported, people are motivated to keep going. But when it’s undermined, they disengage.
In business, competence is often overlooked, but if anything, it’s the most important thing to do. We’re constantly asking things of our customers, employees, and ourselves. That may be something as simple as understanding marketing messaging. Completing onboarding tasks. Actually using our product. Or absorbing educational content that makes people feel smarter after.
When people feel more competent, their trust and loyalty to a brand rises. Confusing instructions or unclear offers do the opposite by creating friction, which kills motivation.
This is especially apparent in websites. There’s always a trend for over-designed pages with flashy animation and lots going on, or the complete opposite of a fully stripped back, actually too minimalistic design.
Both of these actively strip customers of their sense of competence by not making it clear what they’re meant to do next.
Relatedness is our universal need to feel belonging. Humans don’t thrive in isolation (as proven by some of the crazy stories that came out of the Covid-19 lockdowns). We want to feel seen, values, and connected to something larger than ourselves.
It’s why people will go to their local yoga studio rather than doing a home workout. Or how a sustainable skincare brand sells the sense that you’re participating in climate-conscious action rather than just buying a top up of your moisturiser.
I recently read here that “customers that are emotionally connected to brands have a 306% higher lifetime value (5.1 years) versus. satisfied customers (3.4 years)”. So this is truly the piece of the puzzle which will accelerate the growth of your brand.
From a founder perspective, I can also speak first hand on how relatedness means not building in a vacuum. There’s a misleading myth that being an entrepreneur means going at it alone, but when you’re instead surrounded by peer networks, mentors, or just people to lean on, you will feel the difference.
So what does this mean for positioning?
To position your business in a way that sticks, you must also look inward as to whether your business is meeting these three needs for both you and your customers.
Try asking yourself:
Does this positioning give my customer a sense of agency (autonomy)?
Does it help them feel capable and supported (competence)?
Does it connect them to something bigger (relatedness)?
As an example, I love Patagonia (and probably overuse them as an example). They give customers a sense of agency to align purchases with values, and makes it very clear that they aren’t actively targeting more sales as this would be bad for the environment. So it’s your choice if, and what, you buy (autonomy). It equips their audience with high-quality gear that will suit their purpose, has just the right amount of product choice so that their customers can pick the option for them without being overwhelmed, with an easy checkout experience to support this (competence). And it connects their followers to an environmental mission to support their identity of caring about the environment and allows them to feel like they’re contributing for good (relatedness).
On a smaller level, internal goal setting can be framed with SDT. Allow your employees to choose their own goals (autonomy), set them challenging but achievable milestones (competence), and connect the goals to a shared vision (relatedness). They’ll undoubtedly be more committed to those goals than if you were to simply hand over a set of impossible targets the colleague had no say in.
How do you bring SDT into your business processes?
It really doesn’t have to be complicated. It’s just about being human.
It could look like:
An onboarding flow that lets people choose their own starting path.
A personal welcome email that feels genuinely warm, and outlines the steps ahead for your service.
Website copy that doesn’t feel sleezy or pressure the reader.
Clear business value propositions that underpin everything you do.
Offering stories and testimonials customers can relate to.
Celebrating milestones that are achieved and updating on progress.
When you design for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, you create a business that feels good to run and good to buy from. And that’s what makes a brand sustainable and magnetic,
If you need help creating a strategy that’s underpinned by SDT, that’s what I do.
Like this article? I’d love it if you subscribed!
