How To Create Brand Positioning For Your Products and Services

Your brand positioning should shape every aspect of your marketing strategy. If your customers are not thinking about you, you may begin to notice your sales goals slipping.

Positioning is what gets you seen and remembered. It can shape how your customers view the market and the competition., and how they perceive your brand (whether that’s your company, product, or service).

Your brand positioning needs to be decided long before you worry about how much you need to set aside for your marketing and advertising budget. It's that important!

So, Why Is Positioning Such a Big Deal?

Your customers are experiencing information overload due to the volume of marketing and advertising messages they’re overwhelmed with every day. That’s why marketers need to position their brands to get in front of the right customers.

Brand positioning helps to change the way customers perceive you, the market, and your competitors. You need to change customer perceptions so they not only see your products and services, but also so they buy!“Since so little of your message is going to get through anyway, you ignore the sending side and concentrate on the receiving end. You concentrate on the perceptions of the prospect. Not on the reality of the product,” says Ries and Trout in their book Positioning.

How Can You Make Brand Positioning Work For You?

First, list what your competitors like to say about themselves. Like that they’re:

• Cheaper
• #1
• We take your business to the next level!

Now, take a step back. Can you spin having the opposite to help define your brand position? Here’s how some companies and movements did just that:

• Cheaper versus expensive: A GM Impala is an affordable and reliable car, but you need one of their Cadillacs if you want to people to think you’re successful.
• For a certain group: The very successful “For Dummies” book series was specifically created for novices, and it’s a great example of an expandable positioning strategy for Wiley.

How To Check If Your Positioning Is Working

Positioning is something you must commit to long-term. Here are a few questions to ask yourself before you settle on your brand positioning:

1. Can you own this position completely? If not, why? Does someone already own that niche or area of the market?
2. Is your positioning simple enough to be summed up in a few words?
3. Are there any industry developments or shifts that could undermine this positioning strategy?
4. Does your brand positioning answer a largely unmet need? This could be a golden opportunity for you to find a market with very few competitors.
5. How close are any of your competitors to this positioning?

What Do You Think?

Do you think your brand positioning can make a difference in your marketing efforts? Need help getting started, let us help you!