How to Position Your Brand

Now that you have the product, how do you get noticed? Brand Positioning is the way you want your customers and stakeholders to perceive, think and feel about your brand versus competitive entries. Positioning provides a blueprint for the development and franchise building of the brand. Therefore, it precedes the development of all sub-strategies such as pricing, distribution, packaging, and all other parts of the marketing mix elements. It becomes the equity that creates value for the brand that goes beyond the physical properties of the product, company or market share position. Brand positioning establishes in strategic language the competitive reason for the customer selection of your brand versus that of your competitor and the unique position you intend to occupy in their mind. In other words, it identifies why customers should care about your company in the first place. This positioning must be wonderfully specific in its wording – the strategic language is the customer’s language, not the company’s. Customer language is the province of the agency, not that of the client marketing team. This is why agencies exist. The competitive reason must go way beyond mere product attributes to identity in a customer’s meaningful way the differentiation of the new brand versus the established brands/options. Often, the lack of a formal positioning statement or commitment increases the effort and risk required to craft marketing programs that deliver measurable results.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

1. There are four principles (the 4 “C’s”) that may drive the positioning strategy:
   
   1. Core Competency – What the company does best
   
   2. Competitive Differentiation – What differentiates the company/product from the competitors? Make sure to take notice of competitors positioning statements and messaging strategies. What do their websites look like? What comes to mind when you view them? What do you want to come to mind when taking view of Your Company in comparison?
   
   3. Customer Benefit – What is meaningful to the customer? What is the actual value proposition?
   
   4. Company Value – The long-term capital market value; What makes this a great investment?
   
   Ideally, it would be great to have all these orientations combined into one statement, but that can be very difficult, if not impossible for some enterprises (and, in many cases, counter-productive to do so). Following is an outline common to many positioning programs, although each may be unique to different companies, technologies and products.
2. The process will require the dedication of one-half to a full business day, in a location separated from the normal company location to avoid interruptions. Make sure all key stakeholders are present.
   
   A Positioning process operates as follows:
   
   STEP ONE:
   1. Establish the end process deliverables
   2. Establish the process – timeline and budget
   
   STEP TWO: Establish Objective Situation Analysis
   1. Review current positioning, including what works and what doesn’t.
   2. What does your company do well? What does it not do well?
   3. What is unique to Your company?
   4. Who are Your Company key constituencies and why?
   5. What markets should Your company penetrate?
   6. How does Your Company presently connect with its target audiences?
   7. Who are Your Company's key strategic partners and why?
   8. Who is Your primary competition and how is Your Company differentiated?
   9. Who are the secondary competitors?
   10. How do YOU craft a position that produces a revenue-generating enterprise without compromising core values and “soul?”
   
   STEP THREE: Positioning Development
   1. Create a market positioning(s) for Your company.
   2. Define the position, key messages and value position.
   3. Answer the following:
   a. What trends drive the public to Your company's new position?
   b. What are the characteristics of these constituencies?
   c. What are the requirements for a complete solution to these constituencies’ needs?
   4. How does this position help Your company differentiate itself from the competition?
   5. Is this differentiation sustainable and measurable?
   6. What specific steps will Your Company need to take over the next six months to achieve the goals above?
3. Depending on how you conduct your process and its outcome, put together a "next steps" list. Do you want to start with recreating your company name? Maybe you just had some big news and you need to begin with PR. Perhaps you need marketing materials because you have discovered that you lack the tools to move forward. Would a website aid in gaining momentum? Then again, maybe just some advertising would be ideal. Depending on budget, objectives, and immediate needs set and execute your strategy making sure to maintain consistency across the board...keeping messaging, look and feel, and positioning statements the same across all mediums.