How Your Business Can Create a Strong Brand Positioning in Its Market
No matter what kind of business you run, you need to make brand building a top priority. Without a unique, well-established brand, you’re going to struggle to stand out among all your competition.
A big part of building a brand for your business is brand positioning. You need to know what kind of space you want to occupy in a customer’s mind and what you’re going to do to fill that space.
Not sure how to create your own brand positioning strategy? We’ve got you covered.
Read on to learn how your business can establish strong brand positioning within your specific market.
What Is Brand Positioning?
Brand positioning is all about encouraging your customers to create certain associations with your business.
If you do a good job of creating your business’s brand positioning strategy, customers will think of your brand and be more inclined to reach out to you when they’re in need of a particular product or service.
There are three main objectives of brand positioning:
- Relevance: Your brand must be appealing to your customers and relevant to their particular needs or desires.
- Differentiation: Customers need to be able to separate your brand from other brands within the same market.
- Credibility: Customers need to see you as an authority figure within your market; otherwise, they won’t have trust in your brand.
It’s important to meet these three objectives with your branding strategy.
If you don’t, you’re going to have a hard time appealing to customers. It’ll be difficult to grow your business and build your brand, too.
Creating a Strong Brand Positioning Strategy
You can see that brand positioning is important to your current and future customers. How do you create a strong brand positioning strategy, though? How do you make sure you’re meeting the objectives listed above?
Here are some tips that will help you establish an effective branding strategy that will ensure customers create strong, positive associations with your brand:
Understand Your Current Positioning
Before you can start adjusting the way you advertise and making changes to your brand positioning strategy, you need to understand your brand’s current positioning.
Think carefully about how you’re currently marketing your products or services. In order to figure out your current brand positioning, it’s a good idea to work backwards and think about your target customer.
Once you’ve defined them, think about your business’s mission and values. Think, too, about what separates you from your competition. Evaluate your value proposition, your brand, and your current brand voice and persona.
Now that you’ve taken stock of all these things, ask yourself if your brand feels authentic and appealing to your target customer.
Look at Your Competition
After you’ve taken stock of your current brand positioning, you need to look at your competition and see what they’re doing.
You probably know of one or two brands who are selling products or services similar to yours. Do you fully understand all your competitors, though?
If you don’t know who your competition is, your first step should be to identify all the businesses that are selling products or services in the same market as you.
Work with your sales team to do market research and identify competitors.
Reach out to your customers, too, and find out which businesses they were considering working with before they worked with you.
You can also use social media to see which brands people are talking about that offer similar products and services as your business.
Do Your Research
Once you’ve identified your competition, your next step is to identify their brand positioning.
In order to identify another company’s brand positioning, consider the specific products and services they offer, as well as their strengths and weaknesses.
You should also take a good look at their marketing strategies and the kind of tone and brand persona they’re using.
Know What Makes You Unique
It might be tempting to emulate what your competitors are doing.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with making use of the tactics that are working for your competitors. But, it’s important not to lose what makes your business unique.
After all, if you try to mimic another company entirely, your customers aren’t going to be able to tell the difference between your business and someone else’s.
This isn’t going to help you make more sales or improve your brand positioning.
Figure out what makes your business unique and what separates you from your competition. Then, play to those strengths as you work on improving your brand positioning.
Create a Positioning Statement
A crucial component of a brand positioning strategy is a positioning statement.
Your positioning statement is a brief statement communicating the unique value your business provides and how it differs from your competition.
When creating a positioning statement, think about how you can appeal to your target customers. Remember, as EraserFarm points out, emotion is key in marketing.
If you want your brand to really stand out, you need to create an emotional connection with your target audience.
Implement Your Strategy
Now that you’ve done your research and established a positioning statement, it’s time to implement your branding strategy.
Set clear goals for what you want to accomplish with your new strategy, and make sure your positioning statement aligns with your marketing plan. That way, all of your advertisements will help you reach those goals.
Test and Revise as Necessary
Just because you’ve implemented your brand positioning strategy, that doesn’t mean the hard work is over. Now, you need to measure your results and see how your sales improve.
Pay attention to the results you see from your new brand positioning strategy and make changes as needed to refine your approach and reach your goals.
Need More Branding Advice?
Clearly, a strong brand positioning strategy is essential if you want your business to survive in 2019 (and beyond).
Keep this information in mind so you can ensure customers remember your brand and create the right associations with it.
Do you want to learn more about branding and promoting your business?
If so, be sure to check out the Business posts on our site today. You’ll find all kinds of helpful information here on brand building, marketing, and more.