Brand Positioning in your Marketing Strategy

Brand Positioning is a unique concept in a marketing strategy that plays an integral role in a company’s branding. Unfortunately, it is only rarely considered when a business is developing a marketing plan mainly because people do not know what it is. Ultimately, successful branding will evaluate their brand’s positioning frequently, as it must be adjusted whenever a new product or service is introduced.

So, what exactly is brand positioning? It is the figurative place that a company takes residence in their target consumer’s mind. In this position, the consumer’s will have a definite idea in how they will benefit from your business when they think of your brand.

Every business should strive to have a distinct and unique brand position from their competitors. An effective brand positioning strategy will be distinct, relevant to their target client, and establish credibility for the business. Maximizing each one of those components will optimize the position of your brand and will fortify your marketing strategy.

Here are some tips in developing your brand position.

The Four Pillars of Brand Positioning

There are four imperative elements that must be considered before you begin the brand positioning process:

1. Target Client: You must be able to identify the target client and their needs and evaluate how your product/service is relevant to them
2. Target Category: This is what your product/service should be relevant to. It is the category that best defines what you’re selling and helps establish who you will be competing with
3. Client Benefits: How does your product/service benefit your target clients’ needs? You’re not just selling something to make a profit, you’re selling something that will provide some type of benefit to your valued customers.
4. Ethos: This is the credibility of your brand, products and/or services. Can the target client trust what you’re selling to them will actually help them? Testimonials, Yelp review and an assurance of quality through warranties are ways to build ethos.

The Three Positioning Strategies

While there are many ways to position a brand, there are three primary strategies that can help your brand be positioned correctly.

The first strategy is to position your brand with the consumer in mind. In this plan, you aren’t demonstrating to your target client that you are actively competing with another company with a product/service in the same category. You are simply committing to their benefit from your services, keeping them at the forefront of your branding strategy. Here are some examples of this strategy being employed by some large companies:

1. Goodyear Tires: “We discover, you explore.”
2. Nissan: “You can with a Nissan.”
3. Toyota: “Drive your Dreams.”

It’s good to note that they all directly address you, the consumer in their brand positioning.

The second strategy is to position your brand against the competition. This strategy may not address the consumer at all, and instead stress the brand’s uniqueness and commitment to excellence. Here are some examples of this strategy:

1. MillerCoors, Miller High-Life: “The Champagne of Bottled Beers”
2. Budweiser: “The King of Beers”
3. Heineken: “Heineken refreshes the parts other beers cannot reach”

While none of these examples addresses their competition by name, you can still see that they are making themselves unique while putting their competitors down. With Budweiser claiming to be the King of Beers, they’re essentially saying their beer is incomparable, on a higher level than the competitors.

The third strategy is to position your brand in the category and focusing on the category benefits. This strategy only focuses on the product/service and its benefit to the target client. There is no competitive edge that is obvious in the positioning, and the brand is simply asserting why it can help its consumers. Here are some examples of this strategy:

1. GURU Energy Drink: “Good Energy. Smart Organics.”
2. Red Bull: “Red Bull. Vitalizes Body and Mind.”
3. Go Fast!: “The Athlete’s energy drink.”

This brand positioning strategy can be very effective as long as the benefit is obviously implied or is directly stated. These taglines make it their purpose to communicate to their clients how their product will help them in some way and it fits into their category market.

Brand positioning can often be overwhelming to most businesses as there are creative roadblocks in nearly every direction. At Mad Mind Studios, we understand how brand positioning is relevant to your industry and can help you on your journey to success. Please contact us for a free consultation so we can begin the brand auditing process and get your project started!