Edward Boatman • Mar 8th, 2022
You know it’s important, but what is brand positioning anyway? Brand positioning is the unique place your brand holds in consumers’ minds. It shapes your company image and gives consumers a reason to choose your brand over a competitor’s.
Keep reading to learn about the importance of brand positioning and how your company can effectively build a strong brand identity. Our guide to positioning and company image covers:
Let’s dive in.
Brand positioning refers to the unique way consumers view your company and product offering. It encompasses your company’s values, market differentiation, target audience and strategy.
To better define brand positioning, it can be helpful to learn more about its history. The term “brand positioning” was first coined by Jack Trout in 1969. Originally, the term referred to how advertising affects the way consumers think about a company’s product. It later expanded to include the effects of advertising as well as branding in general with the publication of the 1981 novel “Positioning: The Battle of Your Mind.”
So, what is the goal of brand positioning? Overall, brand positioning exists to achieve the following goals:
Your brand positioning may encourage consumers to think of your brand as affordable or luxe, fun or serious, young or mature. Your logo, brand colors, advertising and more can all influence how consumers view your brand. Learn what digital asset management is and how it can help your organize your assets.
Ultimately, brand positioning is about your company image. It creates an emotional connection between consumers and your company and answers the question: Why should consumers choose you over your competitors?
Brand Positioning Example: Founded by brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald, McDonald’s revolutionized fast food by successfully positioning itself as a fast, efficient place to eat.
The Tactic: The McDonald brothers’ innovative kitchen design maximized space and reduced the amount of walking needed so employees could prepare food as quickly and efficiently as possible. Today, McDonald’s is still seen as a leader in the fast-food sphere.
Brand positioning is important because it gives consumers a reason to choose your company over a competitor. This differentiation can come from a number of things, including:
Without effective positioning, consumers have no incentive to buy your product over a competitor’s. In a competitive market, positioning can be the difference between your company failing or succeeding.
Brand Positioning Example: Pepsi-Cola learned the importance of positioning in the early 1930s. After going bankrupt in 1923, Pepsi was on the brink of disappearing from the soda market altogether. Investor Charles G. Guth bought Pepsi-Cola and started selling 12 oz. bottles for a nickel in 1934 — the same price as Coca-Cola’s 6 oz. bottles.
The Tactic: At the tail end of the Great Depression, consumers of the time were especially budget-conscious. Pepsi’s positioning as affordable gave the brand a competitive advantage over Coke that ultimately saved the company.
Now that you know what brand positioning is and why it’s important, the next step is establishing a positioning strategy. But what is a brand positioning strategy anyway? A positioning strategy outlines how your company will target consumers and differentiate itself from competitors. Essentially, it’s your company’s framework for branding, marketing and overall customer experience.
To create your brand positioning strategy, there are five main steps to follow that will help set you up for success.
Before you can sell your product to a consumer, you need to find out if there’s a market for your offering. Answering these questions is the basis of market and consumer research.
Market research gathers information about entire industries or verticals. This information can be gathered in a number of ways, such as:
That information is then used to determine market viability and find any market gaps.
Once you’ve found a viable market, the next step is understanding who is in this market and what their needs are. This is where consumer research comes in. Consumer research identifies buyer:
Having a firm understanding of these factors can help your company create a product that’s in demand, priced appropriately and unique from the competition.
The importance of identifying your company’s competitive advantage can’t be understated. Without a competitive advantage, there’s no real reason consumers should choose your company over another.
Companies can build their competitive advantage in a number of ways. If market research identified an unfilled gap, your competitive advantage could be a completely new product or a revolutionized product. If there’s no market gap, your competitive advantage could be location, price, quality, speed or something else your consumer values.
For example, one restaurant may beat out another because of its prime location. Walmart competes with other grocery stores by offering some of the lowest prices in the industry. Nike differentiates itself by focusing on innovation and evoking an emotional connection — like with their empowering “Just Do It” tagline.
In short, you need to give consumers a reason to choose your company. Identifying your competitive advantage gives you this reason.
Now that you understand your target audience, your market and your competitive advantage, it’s time to articulate what you’ve learned in a positioning statement.
First, what is a brand positioning statement? You can think of your positioning statement as your guiding North Star. Usually, it’s a one- or two-sentence statement describing what your product or offering is, who it’s for and what makes it different from the competition.
To create your positioning statement, you may find it helpful to use this template and fill in the blanks:
For [target audience], [company name] provides [product promise]. Unlike other [market competitors], only [company name] offers [competitive advantage].
Amazon's positioning statement describes who their target audience is, how Amazon’s offering helps them and what differentiates Amazon from the competition.
After completing your positioning statement, the next step is communicating it to internal team members. Be sure to relay your positioning statement to members from all teams, including:
Your positioning goals should guide every company decision in every department. Making sure everyone is aware of those goals will help you stay consistent, even when you are working at scale.
Once your internal staff understands positioning goals, it’s time to get team members together and decide on how external communications will reflect your positioning statement. External communications include marketing materials, campaign strategies, branding guidelines and customer experience structures.
Marketing your product and message can be done in many different ways, and knowing where to start can sometimes feel overwhelming. If you don’t yet have a brand identity and brand guidelines, these are great starting points. These assets cover the building blocks of communication such as your logo, brand colors, style guidelines and fonts. Making these decisions before launching any marketing campaigns will help you maintain a consistent brand at scale.
With your brand identity and guidelines nailed down, the next step is developing marketing materials and assets. You’ll want to create communications and strategies for consumers along several touch points in their buyer journey:
Through every phase of the buyer journey, your company needs to be communicating your brand positioning to the consumer.
While the goals of brand positioning are the same no matter what market your company is in, different verticals can affect positioning. The battery market, for example, is highly competitive. With different brands offering essentially the same product, Duracell focused its positioning on evoking emotion. They encouraged consumers to trust the brand with their “Trust is Power” campaign.
Taking a look at how brands position themselves in different markets can help you envision your own positioning strategy. Here are six examples of strong brand positioning across the product, marketing and food industries.
Wondering how to position your product-based company? Check out how these product-based companies positioned themselves for a little inspiration.
1. Dove
As a retailer for soaps, lotions and other self-care products, Dove exists in a competitive market. After all, there are plenty of deodorants on the market that all do essentially the same thing, so why should a consumer choose Dove?
To set its products apart, Dove focused on positioning itself emotionally as an advocate for natural beauty and confidence. Dove’s “Real Beauty'' campaign is a great example of this positioning.
2. Apple
Apple positions its products as cutting edge, exclusive and luxe. AirDrop revolutionized sharing large files with ease. New models come out yearly with fresh features, faster specs and increased functionality.
Not only does this help Apple position itself as a brand that’s always pushing the boundaries, but it also creates exclusivity. Having the latest iPhone is a status symbol. Status and exclusivity are also emphasized with blue text messaging bubbles that only appear for Apple users.
If your company focuses on marketing, take a look at how these marketing industry giants positioned themselves.
3. HubSpot
HubSpot’s brand positioning challenges spammy outbound marketing strategies and focuses on inbound strategies to attract, engage and delight customers. HubSpot also positions itself as an industry leader, creating certifications that marketing professionals can display on their resumes or LinkedIn profiles.
4. Drift
Drift’s positioning focuses on creating an excellent customer experience. The company coined the term “conversational marketing” and created a tool focused on person-to-person communication. In a time where automation and efficiency reign, Drift’s positioning pushes back by focusing on human interactions that build a better customer experience, even if they aren’t as scalable.
Trying to position your brand in the food industry? See how these popular franchises created their unique positioning.
5. Chipotle
Before Chipotle entered the food industry, Taco Bell was the leading Mexican food franchise. To compete, Chipotle positioned itself as the place to go for quality food made with fresh ingredients. This positioning affected all of its marketing decisions, and it can be easily seen in its “Food With Integrity” campaign.
6. Starbucks
Starbucks positions itself as the place to go for “authentic coffee, great experience and faster delivery.” Before Starbucks entered the scene, consumers didn’t have great options for quality coffee.
Photo by Varun Gaba on Unsplash
Grocery stores carried cheap robusta beans that were, more often than not, stale. Starbucks provided these consumers with a higher quality arabica bean, as well as a great customer experience. Writing customer names on cups provided a personal touch, and quick service made it possible to grab your coffee before work.
Throughout the life of your company, you may find you need to reposition your brand. This could happen because of poor positioning decisions in the first place, or it could simply be because of changing market demands. Either way, when growing and improving your brand positioning, it’s important to consider a few key factors:
Brand Repositioning Example: Old Spice is a perfect example of successful repositioning. At the company’s advent, Old Spice products were marketed toward older men. “Manliness” was associated with fathers and grandfathers. When Axe entered the men’s grooming market with sleek, fresh advertising, Old Spice was on the verge of irrelevance. It was a classic case of new and exciting vs. well… old.
This bold ad had the right amount of fun and quirkiness to appeal to a younger demographic, and it increased sales of Old Spice body wash by 27% in a matter of six months.
Brand positioning helps your company secure a unique place in consumers’ minds and gives them a reason to choose you over other brands.
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