The What, Why, and How of Brand Positioning
Ever opened up your (or a loved one's) Netflix account and been overwhelmed by the choice of shows? Your target customers probably feel the same way when they're looking for businesses in your industry or category and need to make a choice.
Why should they choose your business? Be it a TV show or a brand, we're all spoilt for choice.
This is where your brand positioning comes into play. What is it? Brand positioning is the way your consumers perceive your brand. It's the brand strategy framework that ensures your brand stands apart from your competitors. Your positioning statement is your guideline by which you create your brand message.
According to Harvard Business Review, when building a brand strategy, many companies account for factors like competitor research, marketplace performance and sales, but they often leave out the customer's perception of their brand.
Why do I need a brand positioning strategy?
Having a well-designed logo, a great visual identity or a punchy tagline is not enough to motivate your target customer to choose your brand. Brand positioning is what the customer thinks of your brand, even when they aren't interacting with it.
You can use any of the following criteria to be the core of your brand development strategy:
customer service (e.g., Apple's stellar customer service influences the premium price)
price (Walmart)
convenience (Amazon)
differentiation from competitors (think of the ad wars between Pepsi and Coca Cola)
The suggestions are endless, but it really comes down to the nature of your industry, and your specific business objectives. Once you have the core of brand position strategy pinned down, you can optimize those marketing dollars for the best returns.
Here are some tips to create a brand positioning strategy that puts your company's brand on top of consumer preferences.
What does your target audience need?
First, you need to know your target audience's experience with your industry. Do they come up on certain pain points along the customer journey and sales process? Where does your service or product come into the bigger picture of their lives? Do they have any unfulfilled needs that no one in the industry has addressed yet? To get these answers, you would have to deploy intensive market research in the form of questionnaires, surveys, or conversations with people who fit the definition of your ideal client avatar.
Strong brand positioning could start with answering the question, "What do you want your audience to remember your brand identity for?"
Don't give your target market a transaction that stops with just your product or service. Give them an experience or unique selling proposition that goes above and beyond what they expect. This way, your brand means more than a physical product, it also brings a smile to their face.
What does your competition do?
As glitzy as building a marketing strategy is, a lot of it is actually hitting the books and sifting through data. Once you've studied your target customers, you now conduct competitor research. Include all the competition in your industry, no matter the size of their market share. Not to imitate your direct competitors, but to stand apart from them.
Your unique selling proposition cannot be just low prices. It can, but it also has to address the gap between what your target audience wants and what's currently available in the market. Finding and filling that gap can make all the difference. For instance, when Dollar Shave Club launched in 2011, they offered "f**king great blades' at your door without the fuss and extras that other brands offered (specifically the shaving brand that rhymes with the word 'millet'). The brand marketing of not just an desirable price but also a unique value proposition (that they live up to) made them a disruptor in their industry.
What can your company do?
Ask yourself what your company excels at. Is your brand meeting a specific core desire of your target audience?
How does your brand personality communicate your unique selling proposition? How have your set your brand positioning strategy to be different from your competitors?
When you're assessing something you've built from scratch, like a branding strategy, it can be difficult to be overly critical. But set your emotional connections aside, and take an external viewpoint. Imagine you're vetting your best friend's brand strategy—you'd want your best friend to succeed, wouldn't you? After all, you are your own best friend in this process of running your business.
Some questions to ponder on are:
What are the value propositions of your brand?
What does your brand do that's different from other brands?
What are your current marketing strategies?
What do you want your target customer to think of your brand?
What is your brand’s being?
Make a chart of a the following and find the artery that connects all or most of these features
Attributes
These are your product's features. It may be a little trickier figuring this out with a service, but you may be able to come up with some features, even if they aren't tangible.
Benefits
When a customer uses your product or interacts with your service, what benefits do they get from it? Go back to your competitor research, and assess if your benefits differ from the competition.
Brand Personality
These are the parts about your brand that elicit a certain emotion or response from your customers. For example, insurance companies' advertise about the reliability of their services or the peace of mind. There is no mention of the circumstances that cause you to use their services. This way, they manage to eliminate the not-so-good feelings that come with insurance and bring the peace of mind that comes with insurance to the surface.
What are those core values or emotions that you want your audience to feel about your brand promise?
Expertise
Your brand purpose didn't emerge out of thin air, it may be the result of your own values, personal brand, deep passion, or a long career in a certain field. What makes you an expert?
Customer expression
By using your product or service, what does it say about your consumer? Think about this component of your brand image to the eyes of people who are associated with your direct consumer.
All the above should come together to help you craft a successful brand position.
Building your brand positioning statement
Now that you have your questions answered, you're ready to frame your brand positioning statement. This statement sums up your brand purpose, and what makes it different when consumers interact with it. This blog post from Cult Branding Company reminds us that a brand positioning statement is not a tagline. It's a brand's unique guideline that is used internally to guide all marketing initiatives and operations.
Here's a an effective brand positioning exercise where you get to fill in the blanks:
For [your target market] who [target market need], [your brand name] provides [main benefit that differentiates your offering from competitors] because [reason why target market should believe your differentiation statement.]
Once you have your brand positioning statement penned out, ensure it is communicated and executed through everyone in your company, from your interning customer service associate to the most experienced person on your sales team. This is how authentic brands get their customers to receive the same approach on non-advertising / marketing mediums through their business model, whether they're speaking to customer service associates or emailing your sales department.
So how do you get this brand messaging to feed into your marketing efforts and mass marketing campaigns?
Communicating your brand positioning strategy
To ensure your brand identity echoes your brand positioning, make sure all your brand assets are consistent in tone and feel. This cohesive brand communication influences your customer's perception to think of your brand in a certain way or associate it with a certain emotional connection. Brand consistency also helps build brand loyalty, and help with lead generation.
This is no templated one and done way to communicate or establish your brand positioning. If there were, many brands would be excelling at this. A strong brand position helps you execute your brand strategy with utmost effectiveness.
