Brand Positioning 101: 5 Practices To Do It Right

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Many companies believe that developing a reputation is accomplished through customer service. While this is true, there are still many ways to affect how your audience perceives you. For one, creating a good brand position may assist you in attracting the kind of clients you want.

Brand positioning is a marketing technique that assists businesses in differentiating themselves from competitors. It's insufficient to create a website and hope that millions of people flock to it. This is because it can be difficult for a business to flourish in the marketplace without establishing a solid brand positioning.

To help your business, here are the best practices on how you can position your brand the right way:

1. Assess Your Current Brand Positioning  

Whether you’re aware of it or not, you already have a market position. Your existing brand positioning provides critical context for determining your future steps in brand positioning solutions. Also, to do a thorough analysis of your competitors, you'll need to comprehend your present position.

Begin by identifying and defining your target customer. Then, define your purpose, values, and what differentiates you from the competition. Finally, evaluate your value proposition, as well as your existing brand identity and voice.

If you can affirmatively respond to all of these questions, your positioning should place you on the road toward success:

• Is your positioning unique in today's market?
• Could you sustain your positioning for the long term?
• Will the positioning motivate members of the team?
• Will your target audience identify with the positioning?
• Is the positioning consistent with your strategy and vision?
• Does the positioning seem feasible? To put it another way, can you do what you promise?
• Is the placement entirely accurate for your cultural background and beliefs?

The chosen approach will be apparent based on an assessment of these evaluation criteria. If you don't do this, you should explore alternative options or do more research to better understand the market situation.

2. Conduct Competitor Research 

The preceding stage provided a great deal of information about your company. Next is to analyze your competitors. A competitive market study helps you identify the key competitors in the industry. You can evaluate the marketing tactics and potential resources that your business might utilize to overtake the competition.

• Are there levels or tiers to their product/service offers?
• What’s their unique selling proposition?
• Which marketing approaches are proving successful for them?

Not only does competitor analysis educate you about your competitors, but it also identifies areas where your brand may thrive. Keep the points above in mind while comparing yourself to your competitors.

3. Create Unique Selling Propositions (USPs) 

A unique selling proposition is a critical component of every successful marketing strategy. A USP is a summary of what distinguishes your company and makes it worthwhile to your target market. It responds to the following question: How do your company services help your customers more than any of your competitors can?

Here's how you can create a UPS:

• Describe your target audience.
• Identify the pain points or challenges of your target audience.
• List down the benefits your clients can get from your products/services.
• Write down your pledges to your clients.
• Combine all the things you listed and simplify them in one paragraph.

A well-articulated unique selling proposition enables consumers to immediately grasp what your company provides and why they should pick you over the competition.

4. Make A Strong Positioning Statement  

All branding starts with a statement. The overall target market image, along with a short explanation of how you'd want consumers to view your brand, is what constitutes a brand positioning statement (based on research and data).

Best-in-class positioning statements are made up of four fundamental components:

• Target customer: The description of the behavior and demographic characteristics of the people you want to attract to your brand.
• Market definition: The market category in which a brand competes and what kind of consumer it relates to.
• Brand promise: The advantage (emotional/rational) your brand provides to your target consumers that no one else can take away.
• Reason to believe: Proof that supports the claim that your brand is living up to its brand promise.

5. Integrate Your Brand Positioning In Your Customer's Behavior  

The best way to build consumer loyalty is to start from the inside. Every employee that interacts with a client must perfectly convey your company values, goals, vision, and mission. Because everyone interacts with the consumer, everyone in your team should represent your viewpoint well.

Now comes the hard part: putting your brand on a wall. List all of your brand’s contact points with your customers.  Every touchpoint should look, sound, and feel like your brand.

Conclusion  

Your brand's market positioning affects how it compares to your competitors. Brand positioning distinguishes a household name from a business attempting to compete in a crowded market. After creating your original brand positioning strategy, be open to fine-tuning it to maximize consumer awareness and relationships.