“Developing a brand positioning strategy will help you find the right parking space inside your consumers’ minds and go for it before someone else takes it.”
Laura Busche
“Here’s a once in a lifetime opportunity: I am willing to pay for any car you put your eyes on. That’s right – any car. Just go for it – it’s on the house.”
If I were to say those magical words to your face, what’d be your first impression?
I know you’d get excited.
And soon, you’d find yourself dreaming about getting your hands on a Mustang or maybe a Tesla. Or a Lamborghini.
After all, that’s the dream, isn’t it?
And when you finally make a decision, here’s what I want you to understand:
It doesn’t matter which car you chose. But the company that manufactures this car heavily influenced your decision.
So, if you chose a Mustang, Ford made you choose it.
Popular brands like Volkswagen, Tesla, Ford already know what people value the most about cars.
And whether you know it or not – brands use this kind of knowledge to build an intentional perception of their products/services in their audience’s minds.
By tapping into the power of brand positioning, companies position their brands in the mind of their consumers and prospects.
Think of any popular brand.
Whether it’s Apple or Nike, any popular brand that you think of already has an outstanding reputation in the marketplace.
People don’t just look up to these brands.
They love them.
They already have a positive image of these brands in their minds.
And that’s what developing a result-oriented brand positioning strategy will help you with.
This blog post sheds light on:
- What is Brand Positioning & Why is it Important?
- 5 Types of Brand Positioning Strategies You Should Know About
- How to Develop a Result-Oriented Brand Positioning Strategy?
Let’s touch down on each one of these topics one by one.
First, let’s understand what brand positioning means.
What is Brand Positioning & Why is it Important?
I’ve seen entrepreneurs believe in the myth that they can build an outstanding brand reputation by singlehandedly delivering good products or services – and doing nothing else.
I do not deny the fact that you should offer a good product or service.
You definitely should.
But that’s not the only thing about your brand that your audience will fall in love with.
You need to focus on different aspects like delivering a great experience, adding value, focusing on your audience’s pain points and problems, and much more.
Most importantly, you should develop a favorable position in the marketplace that’ll help you attract and retain your audience.
If this right here is the very first time you have heard about brand positioning, here’s the definition for you:
“Brand positioning is the art of positioning your brand in your audience’s minds. It’s so much more than a fancy logo or your catchy tagline. Developing a brand positioning strategy will help you differentiate yourself from your competitors in an efficient manner.”
A brand positioning strategy will help you position your brand as unique, favorable, credible, and different in your audience’s minds.
The thing is – your brand already has a reputation.
But it’s up to you to decide whether you want to gain control of your brand image and reputation.
With a world full of brands offering the same products these days, you need to make sure that you are differentiating your brand from the competition.
This will help you communicate value, raise brand awareness, justify your pricing, and much more.
Some benefits of brand positioning include:
Helps You Laser Focus on Your Target Market
- Allows You to Differentiate Yourself from the Competition
- Helps Gain Clarity on the Problems
- Enhanced Understanding of the Customers’ Challenges
- Helps Build Message & Story that Resonate
- Allows You to Justify Your Pricing Strategy
And many more!
That being said, if you wish to reap these benefits, you need to gain insights into your target market.
On top of this, you need to sow the seeds in the form of brand signals.
These brand signals are nothing but sensory triggers that will help you build a bond between your brand and your audience. You can easily communicate these signals via your visual identity and brand messaging.
However, you should make sure that these signals resonate with what your audience expects.
That’s the only way you’ll be able to create a positive image of your brand in your audience’s minds.
Before you start developing your brand positioning strategy, it’s important to learn that not all brand positioning strategies serve the same purpose.
The purpose may vary.
That’s the reason we’ll now look at the different types of brand positioning strategies you should know about.
5 Types of Brand Positioning Strategies You Should Know About
Following are the five important brand positioning strategy types I want you to be familiar with:
- Positioning Strategy Based on Product Characteristics
- Based on Price
- Based on Competition
- Based on Product Use or Application
- Based on Luxury or Quality
Let’s focus on each of them one at a time.
Brand Positioning Strategy Based on Product Characteristics
I’ll be honest with you.
I love cars.
That’s the reason I love referring to the automobile industry in my articles.
And that’s what I’ll be doing again.
Let’s consider the automobile industry again.
Different automobile brands have their own unique positions in the marketplace.
For example, Toyota’s position is reliability. At the same time, Volvo’s positioning is safety. Porsche’s position is inclined towards performance.
And every single one of their cars communicates their unique position with consumers.
Your product characteristics should always be aligned with your brand positioning strategy. And every single one of your products should easily be communicating your unique position with your audience.
Brand Positioning Based on Price
Your brand positioning strategy can also be based on price. So, if you are a brand offering top-notch products for an extremely low price, then you can position your brand as the one that delivers quality at a competitive price.
And if you are the only one to offer the same products or services at a certain price range, then that’ll become your market position.
Your audience will recognize your brand as the one that offers premier products or services at a budget-friendly price.
Brand Positioning Based on Competition
Like we mentioned already, thousands of your competitors are already offering the same product or service that you are.
Positioning your brand based on competition will help you highlight a major key difference.
This unique point doesn’t necessarily need to relate to your products or services.
Instead, it can be about anything that may sweep your audience off their feet.
Brand Positioning Based on Product Use or Application
You can also base your brand positioning strategy on your product’s use(s) or application(s).
For instance, literally millions of fitness coach out there offering their own unique service.
And you can position your personal brand based on your service’s use or application.
For example, you can position your brand as the one that offers fitness coaching that can help people build a lean body within five months.
But, if you develop your brand positioning strategy based on your product’s or service’s use or application, you need to make sure that your product(s) or service(s) live up to the mark.
Otherwise, developing a brand positioning strategy based on the product use or application will be nothing but a waste of your valuable time as well as efforts.
Brand Positioning Based on Luxury & Quality
High prices are usually associated with high quality.
And you can even develop your brand positioning strategy such that it is based on your product’s quality.
For example, Apple offers the best quality products in the tech space.
And while their pricing is on the higher end of the scale, people don’t usually focus on the pricing.
When they think of Apple, they think about quality.
And if you are offering the best quality or the most luxurious product or service in the market, convey the message to your audience.
Develop your brand positioning strategy based on your product’s or service’s quality.
But, alongside this, what you should note is that not all high-priced products or services are luxurious.
So, you’ll be leaving a bad impression if you base your brand positioning strategy on luxury and quality yet offer a poor-quality product.
And these aren’t the only brand positioning strategies out there. We’ve just listed the most common and major ones. You can target different areas and develop a brand positioning strategy literally on anything.
So, what your brand positioning strategy should be based on heavily depends on your audience’s needs and wants. And once you have finally locked in how you want to position your brand in the marketplace, it’s time to finally start putting in place a brand positioning strategy.
Let’s dive straight into it.
How to Develop a Result-Oriented Brand Positioning Strategy?
You’re just seven steps away from developing a fool-proof brand positioning strategy for your business:
Assess Your Current Position in the Marketplace
- Identify Your Competitors & Conduct Thorough Competitive Research
- Discover What’s Unique About Your Brand
- Build a Brand Positioning Map
- Craft Your Brand Positioning Statement
- Make Sure That You Live Up to it
- Own It
- Assess Your Current Position in the Marketplace
Like we already mentioned, your brand already has a position in the marketplace.
But that doesn’t mean that your audience sees you as a credible and trustworthy brand.
You need to gain control of your brand positioning.
And the first step to do that is by assessing your current position in the marketplace.
But before you do that, ask yourself:
How well do you see your business doing against your competitors?
What are your brand’s unique traits?
Which of your products and services are famous among your customers?
How well is your brand doing in terms of sales and retention?
Get your hands on this data. Be honest with yourself. Compare this data with how you want your brand to be seen.
And there you’ll have it – your current brand position in the marketplace.
Identify Your Competitors & Conduct Thorough Competitive Research
While building your marketing plan, you may have already conducted thorough competitive research. But if you didn’t, it’s incredibly important to understand who you are in direct and indirect competition with.
To develop an outstanding brand positioning strategy, you need to take into consideration your top three or four customers. Look for the brands ranking for the keywords you want to rank for. Use tools like SEMRush, Ubersuggest, or Ahrefs to gain insights into who your competitors really are.
And once you have the list, review their websites, social media profiles, reviews, and anything you can get your hands on.
Understand how well their engagement rate is.
And based on that, consider performing a SWOT analysis. Ask yourself:
- What are their strengths and weaknesses?
- What do their customers love about them?
- What do they hate?
- What’s their Unique Selling Proposition?
- What’s their current market position?
- What promises and claims are they making? Are they living up to all of it?
- What’s their brand positioning strategy based on?
- And is it working?
Discover What’s Unique About Your Brand
Brand positioning will allow you to stand out from your competitors.
But, if you want to position your brand as unique in the marketplace, you yourself need to understand what makes you unique.
What works best for your business? And what’s the one thing that’ll help you attract and retain as many of your target audience as possible in this highly competitive market?
Once you conduct thorough competitive research, you’ll probably start seeing patterns.
You’ll even see that some of your competitors have the same strengths as well as weaknesses.
But some of the popular ones may have their own unique selling proposition.
So, what you need to do now is focus on their weaknesses. And measure them against your strengths.
This will help you identify the one or multiple things you can offer that your competitors cannot.
And that’s how you’ll be able to position your brand as unique in the marketplace.
Build a Brand Positioning Map
Your competitors’ brand positioning strategies will probably be based on different factors.
And like we discussed in the previous section, one of your competitors’ brand positioning may be based on low pricing, whereas the others’ may be based on quality.
Now with the competitors’ list you’ve created, it’s time to place your competitors on a brand positioning map to represent which competitor’s brand positioning strategy is based on which factor(s).
And once you build this map, you’ll see the picture shaping right in front of you.
Here’s an example of a brand positioning map we fetched from the American Marketing Association:
Now, based on your current brand positioning, competitive analysis, your unique offering, and audience’s needs and wants, you can lock in what you want your brand positioning strategy to be based on.
And you can even add it to the map.
This will help you gain a clear perspective of where your brand positioning currently stands.
And you can compare this with where you want it to be.
This will in turn allow you to craft a brand positioning statement and taking the much-needed steps to position your brand the way you want to.
Craft Your Brand Positioning Statement
Now, you have learned what you want your brand positioning strategy to be based on.
The next step is to craft a one or two-sentence statement that highlights your brand positioning strategy and helps you communicate your brand’s mission and values to your customers.
Keep it simple. At the same time, make sure that it’s compelling and catches your audience’s attention.
For example, here’s Coca-Cola’s brand positioning statement for your reference:
“For individuals looking for high-quality beverages, Coca-Cola offers a wide range of the most refreshing options — each creates a positive experience for customers when they enjoy a Coca-Cola brand drink. Unlike other beverage options, Coca-Cola products inspire happiness and make a positive difference in customers’ lives, and the brand is intensely focused on the needs of consumers and customers.“
Not only is it simple, but it also communicates Coca-Cola’s brand positioning in an efficient manner. At the same time, it helps Coca-Cola differentiate itself from its competitors and create a positive image.
Once you craft your brand positioning statement, the next step is to try it out. Put it to the test. Reach out to your consumers and ask them for their honest feedback.
This will help you understand whether your positioning statement is actually having the desired effect or not.
Make Sure You Live Up to It
You can develop a brand positioning strategy based on luxury or quality. But your audience will see right through you if you offer poor-quality products or services to them. You can hire the best copywriter to craft your brand positioning statement.
But, if your actions don’t live up to the words, then you will be leaving a bad impression.
Here’s Amazon’s brand positioning statement:
“For consumers who want to purchase a wide range of products online with quick delivery, Amazon provides a one-stop online shopping site. Amazon sets itself apart from other online retailers with its customer obsession, passion for innovation, and commitment to operational excellence.”
And if you thoroughly read this statement, you’ll find it to be extremely true. There’s just nothing wrong with it.
Some attention-catching words they have used include:
- Wide range of products online
- Quick delivery
- One-Stop online shopping site
- Customer obsession
- Passion for innovation
- Commitment to operational excellence
Amazon’s positioning statement is well-written. It highlights the company’s commitment to delivering excellence. At the same time, it helps Amazon position itself as the #1 Ecommerce store out there.
This statement hasn’t been written to catch the audience’s attention. As you can see, it helps Amazon focus on its core objective – being the best one-stop online shopping site.
Similarly, you can have a brilliantly crafted positioning statement. But be careful about the words you use. You need to make sure that you live up to every single word you use in your positioning statement copy.
Own It
If you followed every single step up until now carefully, you’d probably have your brand positioning strategy ready. This strategy will help you transform your business.
But this isn’t the end.
And trust me – there’s no end.
You need to consistently deliver value and live up to your words.
Keep your brand positioning strategy at the center of your marketing efforts.
And make sure that everyone in your organization contributes towards helping you fulfill your promise.
Use this statement across all your marketing and advertising efforts.
And don’t forget – your products, services, and customer service you deliver should communicate your brand positioning.
Develop Your Brand Positioning Strategy Today!
The big challenge isn’t “How to Develop a Brand Positioning Strategy?”
Instead, it’s how to begin creating one.
Premium brands already know how important brand positioning is. They understand how it can contribute to the success of their business.
As a result, building a brand positioning strategy is at the top of their priority list.
So, what are you waiting for?
Develop yours today.
And if you need any help, feel free to reach out to our branding experts straight away right here:
