https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blJIq9nYZOs&feature=youtu.be
Strategic Brand Positioning That Creates Differentiation
Brand positioning means your brand creates an authentic and unique impression in your future customers’ minds, distinct from the rest of the marketplace.
Brand positioning means your brand will be remembered for something; think: Volvo makes safe cars.
They could still make a fast car or another with lots of storage room, but they are still known for “making safe cars”.
Good positioning aims to create a uniquely authentic impression in the customer’s mind so that the customer associates something specific and desirable with your brand that is distinct from the rest of the marketplace.
Consumers want easy decisions. They don’t want hundreds of options to choose from to find the right one. Consciously and subconsciously, Positioning triggers emotional responses in your target audiences. If the right levers are pulled in the shortest amount of time, you increase the likelihood for people to decide “yes.”
In short, a unique brand positioning breaks through the noise in the marketplace.
Be authentic, be unique, be you.
Where do I start with Brand Positioning?
What are you known for? What does your brand stand for? What sets you apart from the competition?
An authentic brand positioning is more than a tagline or a fancy logo; it is the strategy that sets your business apart from the rest. Making up the positioning to fit a client’s needs now is all well and good, but over time, those needs change. Your brand positioning should sit exactly where your consumer’s needs, the gap between your competition and your authentic brand, and its values overlap.
How should your brand be positioned?
In a real short one. A brand positioning based on what a company believes in gets everyone fired up, and what everyone believes in can last a lifetime. Positioning with purpose brings people to brands who feel the same as they do, clearly articulating that differentiation against competitors wins time and time again and never dies.
A unique positioning means you stand out from the crowd.”
“Positioning a brand is an act of designing the company’s offering and image to occupy a distinct place in the mind of the target market.” – Philip Kotler
Businesses have created positioning statements to shape how their products or services are perceived.
Brands that keep it simple are remembered, like Colgate, which is positioned as protective. A brand’s promise differs from its position statement, but they can influence each other. Look at a few examples of how Coca-Cola’s tagline has evolved over the years, and check out the complete evolution of its tagline here.
This Purpose & Beliefs Page from Target is just one example of how it writes and displays its brand positioning statement.
What are the benefits of a unique Brand Positioning?
How can an authentic positioning benefit your organisation?
Here are several specific ways:
1. Be unique
Brand positioning sets you apart from the competition to become known for something, stake out a unique territory (an industry specialty or a very specialised service offering, for example) that no competitor can dare follow because they will become labelled a “me-too” brand.
2. Be focused
It will help you focus on a specific target market by owning a particular feature or benefit through positioning; you’ll be forced to focus your services accordingly. This, in turn, will make you appear to be an expert in that area, increasing your value to prospects. Specialists grow twice as fast as firms that describe themselves as generalists.
3. Be the ”go-to” brand
Positioning your brand uniquely against the competition will help you decide which new services to offer and how to price them. Are you a higher-priced boutique accounting firm or a no-frills, low-cost provider? Which new services and pricing support that positioning?
4. Be more creative
When your positioning is pinpoint sharp, you can afford to become more effective through creative decision-making. Once you’ve developed the core messaging needed to promote your unique brand positioning, you’ll have the insight to make more effective decisions throughout the creative process. Precise brand positioning drives clear communication.
A unique positioning means you stand out from the crowd.
5. Be more persuasive
Effective brand positioning helps provide the persuasive sales tools your business development team needs to nurture and close more sales. Unique brand positioning boosts firm visibility and is top-of-mind recall for future clients.
Brand positioning, done correctly, can turn your firm into a marketing powerhouse. It can help focus your services, messages, and brand relevance to future customers.
Focusing on your positioning lets you build a compelling message around a specific area of expertise or attribute that significantly appeals to a targeted audience in need of your product or service. That’s why having a unique brand positioning strategy is so important. It provides value to your prospects, gets them interested, and ultimately convinces them to buy from, work with, or remember your brand above other brands in the same category.
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