A Complete Guide: Brand positioning
Brand Positioning
A Complete Guide to Brand Positioning: Brand positioning is the process of positioning your brand in the minds of your customers. More than a tagline or a fancy logo, brand positioning is the strategy used to set your business apart from the rest.
Learn how to identify and leverage your brand position
Think of some iconic brands. What pops into your head? Perhaps it’s Coca-Cola’s distinctive bottles, Apple’s sleek, futuristic presentation, or Amazon’s UX (User Experience). These businesses realized and harnessed the power of brand positioning, and as such, they are easily recognizable and distinctive. Of course, these examples are of some of the world’s powerhouses, with a whole heap of money at their disposal. But any business has the opportunity to carve out their brand position and identity at any time to create a competitive advantage. And if you haven’t already, we’d suggest you start right now.
What is brand positioning?
Brand positioning involves enhancing the positive differentiation your brand offers against competitors and the perception of value in your customers’ minds. While it comprises of elements like your company name, logo, etc., successful brands incorporate positioning as part of their overall brand strategy.
A useful way to think of positioning is considering your USP (unique-selling-point). What is unique about your business? What is your purpose? Why would customers come to you rather than a competitor?
Why is brand positioning important?
Brand positioning helps you leverage your unique benefits and take control of your reputation and how your business is perceived. It’s a chance to really differentiate yourself from your competitors and showcase your values and brand ethos. That’s where the competitive advantage comes in—you are consistently and effectively showcasing the unique benefits of your brand to your target market. And if you do this right, you can use it to justify price and promotional strategies.
“Striking the right balance between centrality and distinctiveness is critical, because a company’s choices influence not just how the brand will be perceived, but how much of it will be sold and at what price—and, ultimately, how profitable it will be.” (Harvard Business Review)
B2C branding example
Let’s take the example of two candle companies. They both sell candles online and offer a range of products. However, Candle company A realized that their audience cares about their carbon footprint and their impact on the environment. They have tapped into this need by positioning themselves as an environmentally-friendly brand. They use organic ingredients and ensure each part of their production is kind to the planet, with biodegradable packaging and a ‘recycle’ scheme for customers to re-use their containers to get money off their next candle. As a result of their ‘kind-to-planet’ positioning and business model, their processes are more expensive, but they can charge a higher premium for their candles due to their brand positioning.
Candle company B has no set positioning. Their target audience also cares about the environment, but they haven’t used that as part of their business or brand strategy. As they offer a similar product, they are losing market share to Candle company A, which have a clear positioning strategy that aligns with their audience.
Regardless of the size or industry your business is in, it is always worthwhile to take the time to carve out your brand position to give clarity to your communication and conversion tactics. Forbes lists four compelling benefits of brand positioning:
- Brand recall
- Emotional appeal
- Increased sales
- Improved customer loyalty
Convinced it’s important yet?!
Ask yourself: If you don’t know your positive differentiation against your competitors, how are your customers supposed to know? Or worse still, what if, through this process, you realize that maybe you don’t have a strong positive differentiation at all? If that is the case, you’ll want to identify that now so you can start making changes quickly.
How do I identify my brand’s position?
Identifying your brand’s position falls into two parts. You need to start by looking at your brand’s current position so you can then carve out how you want to enhance your brand positioning in the future.
Understanding your current brand
Before you can position your brand, you need to know its current identity.
There are two viewpoints to consider:
- Imagine your brand as a person. What is unique about them? What qualities do they have?
- Consider your customers’ perspective. How are you perceived by them?
Top Tip: Here you are shedding light on your current brand positioning. The answers to these questions may not be what you want them to be yet, but that’s ok. The beauty of investing time in positioning is that you are giving your brand space to develop.
In this space, we recommend highlighting your brand’s key attributes. Can you pick 5 qualities from this list? (Be honest with how your brand is positioned now).
A Complete Guide: Brand positioning: Defining your brand positioning
Now you know where your brand is right now, you can get to the fun bit of positioning where you want your brand to be!
Types of Brand Positioning Strategies
- Customer Service Positioning Strategy
- Convenience-Based Positioning Strategy
- Price-Based Positioning Strategy
- Quality-Based Positioning Strategy
- Differentiation Strategy
- Social Media Positioning Strategy
- Other Positioning Strategies
When you’re deciding how to position your brand in the marketplace, you have several options to choose from. Still, the most important recommendation I can give is this: you want to tailor your brand positioning strategy to highlight your product’s competitive advantage and point out your competition’s shortcomings.
1. A Complete Guide: Brand Positioning: Customer Service Positioning Strategy
There’s a pretty good chance you’ve selected a retailer, restaurant, or another service provider because of its customer service at least once.
I find that companies in verticals known for inattentive support benefit from highlighting their friendly customer service to differentiate themselves. Other companies with products that are particularly complicated can highlight their strong support systems to attract new customers.
The most tangible benefit of this strategy is that great customer service can help justify a higher price point. Apple’s products, for example, come at a high premium, but its support staff is friendly and quick to respond.
These service interactions are also an integral part of the flywheel — an initially unhappy customer may become a promoter if they have a great service experience.
Be diligent with this strategy. If you advertise exceptional customer service but don’t deliver, you’ll invite bad reviews, angry tirades over phone and email, callouts on social media, and even Better Business Bureau complaints.
2. A Complete Guide: Brand Brand Positioning: Convenience-Based Positioning Strategy
A convenience-based positioning strategy highlights why a company’s product or service is more convenient than the competition’s. You can base convenience on factors like location, ease of use, wide accessibility, and multi-platform support.
The convenience may also be because of the product’s design. For example, Swiffer advertises its WetJet product as a convenient alternative to a traditional mop because of its disposable mopping pads.
Positioning your product or service as the most convenient will automatically attract busy consumers. And, like the previous strategy, it can also justify a higher price point. For example, a Swiffer WetJet costs $26, whereas an O-Cedar mop is $10.
Burke agrees: “If you have a highly-priced product, it [a compelling brand story] helps to justify your pricing strategy by emphasizing the quality and value that your audience will receive. Not only will this provide reassurance to them, but it could increase your chances of being considered.”
But in some cases, offering convenience can be costly. For instance, if you’re in the B2B SaaS space and you offer your product across multiple operating systems, you’ll likely need a strong, consistently available development team to deliver on your promise. Those developers would need to be on call to resolve bugs and other issues for this positioning strategy to work, and the costs to support them might get out of hand.
The last item I recommend checking is if your product is truly convenient. The WetJet mop, for example, could potentially be inconvenient because customers constantly have to go to the store to buy refills. If you sell a similar product, you might want to offer automatic refill programs or subscriptions to fulfill your customers’ expectations of convenience.
3. Price-Based Positioning Strategy: A Complete Guide Brand positioning
A company uses a price-based positioning strategy to present its product or service as the most affordable option. When you position your product as the cheapest on the market, you can generate a large customer base because no one likes to spend more than they have to. Offering the lowest price is an easy way to get prospects to convert.
I have to note that this strategy comes with its share of risks and drawbacks, namely, giving prospects the impression of lower production quality.
You might also run into economic issues that can hinder your brand positioning over time, like Subway’s $5 footlong that couldn’t survive inflation. Price-based positioning can also initiate a price war, though that mainly applies to certain industries, such as air travel.
4. Quality-Based Positioning Strategy
Companies implement this strategy when they want to emphasize the quality of their product —quality that often comes at a premium cost.
The quality of a product can be shown through exceptional craftsmanship, small-batch production, high-quality materials, and even sustainable practices that make it more expensive to produce. The quality of service can be shown through evidence of exceptional end results, high ROI, and glowing customer testimonials.
Budget-conscious shoppers may bypass your brand in favor of a cheaper alternative, so I recommend looking at your buyer personas: your target customers’ income and shopping habits determine whether emphasizing quality (with a higher premium) is the right approach for your brand.
5. Differentiation Strategy
A differentiation positioning strategy relies on a product’s uniqueness or innovative qualities in comparison to the traditional competition. Tesla is a great example.
Before Tesla vehicles existed, there wasn’t an attractive, fully electric vehicle available for purchase. Now, it’s one of the leading tech companies in the self-driving car and AI robots space.
If you implement this strategy, consumers who value innovation will be attracted to your brand and product. The only possible drawback is that the lack of prior usage might deter the general public. If your product is completely new, I recommend providing the research and testing that went into its creation. Often, innovation-driven consumers like to know how the new technology or product works.
6. Social Media Positioning Strategy
Omer Hamedain, CEO at JTM Digital Solutions, says digital storytelling is the newest evolution of brand positioning in the 21st century: “Through immersive websites, interactive ads, and social media narratives, brands can create a participatory experience that captivates the audience. This approach allows consumers to become co-creators of the brand story, offering them a personal stake in its success.”
Social media brand positioning is unique because it’s focused on a set of channels rather than a stand-alone tactic. And the channels your brand uses (and doesn’t use) say just as much as your messaging does.
Believe it or not, your brand doesn’t have to show up across each platform (and I also wouldn’t suggest you use every single platform). When using this strategy, the key is to choose the channels your target market uses the most. I recommend considering the following three factors when choosing a social media platform for your brand strategy:
- Where your target audience spends their time
- Where your target audience spends money
- Where your target audience looks for information and advice
There’s a chance you can find these three areas on one social platform, but they might be spread across several. Once you narrow down where your brand should show up, you can craft your messaging to meet customers where they are.
7. A Complete Guide: Brand positioning Strategies
These aren’t the only strategies out there. You can position your brand as the leader, the first of its kind (the original), or the most popular. You can also position your product as the solution to a pervasive problem.
Another approach is to directly compare your brand to that of your competitors. In this strategy, you’d directly call out your competition in your ad campaigns and highlight your product’s advantages over theirs. Popeyes vs. Chick-fil-A is a great example of this, and I’ll dive into their battle further below.
When crafting your position, take a close look at your target buyers and their behaviors. Whether they prefer to save, spend money on quality, or have the latest and newest gadget will determine how you position your brand. Jigar says, “When your brand is positioned just right, your target audience is curious to know more. You can attract the right eyeballs and keep them coming back for more because they believe in what you’re selling.”
Now that you know the approaches you can take, it’s time to create a positioning plan. Below, I’ll outline how you can establish your brand as the friendliest, the most convenient, the cheapest, or simply the best choice compared to other brands.
