Differentiating your brand from your competitors has definite benefits for your branding efforts. It leads to successful brand positioning, influencing the visibility of your company and its products/services in clients’ minds.
In other ways, 88% of clients consider authenticity crucial for deciding what brands they would like support; however, when most businesses try to position their brand, it’s either too generic to stand out or too similar to the competitors. Making it a confusing state of affairs for both the business and the target audience.
But we believe every brand is different in its way. Our blog is here to help you understand and master the skill of articulating what sets your brand apart from others through a strategic guide that aligns with your business goals and identity.
Major Brand Positioning Challenges:
Brand positioning is a procedure of creating distinctive identity of the brand in the mind of the customers. The task has its own kind of challenges demanding constant monitoring and adjustment to keep up with the changing market. Over 10,000 branding and positioning agencies are working all across the globe to fight the same challenges, out of them the most challenging ones are mentioned below.
Lack of Differentiation:
When a brand is not differentiated enough from its competitors, it becomes a commodity that doesn’t add value to prospective target audience requirements. This can be avoided by analyzing several factors of your business product, such as features, performance, innovation, design, and social responsibility. To identify how your brand is superior to your competitors and unique.
90% of marketers set a brand tone with memorable and distinct words to connect the uniqueness of the brand with the target audience emotions and aspiration. You must do it too!
Lack of Clarity:
A vague and unclear brand positioning statement won’t get your business anywhere. The brand positioning statement should be relevant, specific, and concise. All of your marketing efforts should clearly state who you are, what you do, and how you do it.
It can only be done when you conduct thorough market research, like 40% of the marketers, conduct research about target customer’s wants, needs, expectations, competitors’ weaknesses and strength, and your own brand’s vision and values.
Lack of Consistency:
When brand positioning lacks consistency, brands miss out on pushing the revenue by 33%, as the brand appears disjointed, fragmented, and contradictory. In such cases, brands confuse your prospective clientele while diminishing their trust and loyalty toward your brand.
Train your partners and employees about your brand positioning, enabling them to provide the best customer experience. Only then will all of your brand interaction through social media, website, advertising, customer service, packaging, etc., reflect your brand positioning.
Lack of Relevance:
Without an appropriate brand positioning, a business appears out of touch, outdated, and unaware of customers’ needs and wants. Slowly losing customers and their interest in a particular brand.
Keeping track of customer’s feedback, market trends and competitor actions is labor intensive work, but it helps in adapting your brand positioning with changing customer preferences.
All these are grave concerns, brand who aren’t able to overcome these challenges, it time to park your worries. The section below will explore several brand positioning strategies that will remove these challenges.
11 Robust Brand Positioning Strategies to Stand Out From your Competitors:
Marketers use a blend of brand positioning strategies to entice their target audience. Go through the strategies mentioned below and decide which brand position strategy suits your business depending upon the market you cater to.
1. Convenience-Based Positioning Strategy:
The convenience-based positioning strategy is based on marketing your products/services as more convenient than your competitors. Aspects like brand usability, platform support, and accessibility can be motivating factors for a client to choose your brand. If you are opting to work with this strategy, you can provide incentives and additional programs, making your target audience feel your product/service is a convenient purchase.
2. Competitor-Based Brand Positioning Strategy:
A competitor-based-brand positioning strategy is one of the best and most commonly used tactics to differentiate your brand from your competitors. It requires marketers to analyze what makes their brand unique: It could be customer service, pricing models, experience, and product features to promote it discreetly to their target audience.
3. Quality-Based Positioning Strategy:
When a company follows a quality-based positioning strategy, the company highlights itself by marketing its craftsmanship and the quality of its products and services. This strategy is most applicable when an organization wants to sell a product/service for a higher price.
4. Price-Based Positioning Strategy:
A price-based positioning strategy is used by organizations when the product or service they provide is the most affordable in the market. This approach is not only for brands that have the most affordable products and services; it is a very good strategy to use to guide undecided clients through the buying journey to opt for affordable products and services.
5. Differentiation Positioning Strategy:
It is a strategy where companies advertise their product and services as an out-of-the-box solution to all the classic challenges in the market.
6. Problem/Solution Positioning Strategy:
The problem/solution positioning strategy creates a distinctive problem-solving tactic by observing and analyzing the company’s user base pain points. Depending upon the user base and pain point, the organization might need to come up with new product and service features. It is an effective way to position a brand for a problem-solving strategy when they launch a new product/service to resolve the challenging pain points of prospects.
7. User-Centric Position Strategy:
User-centric positioning strategy focuses on the unique needs and requirements of prospective clients. Centering on the personalized approach, the brands build a strong connection with the prospective client, and it increases the likelihood of customer loyalty.
8. Emotional-Based Positioning Strategy:
An emotional-based positioning strategy is associated with values, feelings, and aspirations to connect with the prospective clientele on an emotional level. When a brand evokes feelings of joy, empowerment, and aspirations, the chances of forming a deeper bond with the prospective client are higher.
9. Value-Based Positioning Strategy:
Organizations that use value-based positioning strategies focus on highlighting how much value the customers can get out of their products and services. The value of the product/service can be marketed on the basis of functionality, affordability, and quality.
10. Life-Style Based Position Strategy:
In a lifestyle-based positioning strategy, the brand portrays a specific lifestyle in order to entice a target audience who embodies the value of the specific lifestyle.
11. Cultural-Based Position Strategy:
When an organization works with a cultural-based positioning strategy, the principles they work with are the values, traditions, and aspirations of diverse cultures. By putting effort into understanding the different cultural nuances, brands create a meaningful relationship with the target audience, arousing a feeling of belonging. The particular strategy even encourages diversity and inclusivity with a global audience.
These are the best brand positioning strategies; now, depending on the product you are selling, you have to devise an impactful brand positioning strategy. We will take you through two more examples to have a clear picture of how well-known competitors differentiate in the market.
Dollar Shave Club Vs Gillette Brand Positioning:
Dollar Shave Club markets its products with affordable subscription-based services that focus on value and convenience—taking a differentiation approach to establish its brand position.
Gillette markets high-performance shaving products, emphasizing precision engineering and taking a quality-based approach to establish their brand position.
Chipotle Vs Taco Bell Brand Positioning:
Chipotle focuses on marketing its food with integrity, as its target audience enjoys fresh ingredients, sustainability, and the feasibility of customizing its food. Therefore, choosing a quality-based marketing approach to entice their target audience.
Taco Bell’s branding strategy is all about the speed, value, and convenience of fast food, which is why Taco Bell’s brand positioning strategy is convenience-based.
This is how competitor brands connect with their prospect. You can do it too: choose a type of brand positioning strategy for your brand and communicate it with the help of the steps mentioned below.
How to Communicate Your Choice of Brand Positioning Strategies?
You can have a specific brand positioning strategy, or you can go for a mix of a few strategies mentioned above. No matter which way you choose, it has to be communicated in an impactful way to your customers.
1. Tell a Compelling Brand Story:
Stories help us share information in a way that forms emotional connections to inspire incredible customer loyalty. Suppose you have opted for a differentiation position strategy, along with a value-added positioning strategy. It would help if you prepared a story about how your brand is different from the competitor and in what way it adds value.
62% of B2B marketers narrate their brand value through a story, as customers gravitate towards the brand and stay loyal to it.
2. Use Consistent Messaging across All Channels:
Remember, we mentioned at the beginning how challenging it is to maintain brand positioning across multiple channels. Even though it is challenging, it is something you as an organization have to strive for, as brands that stay consistent receive 3.5 times more visibility than inconsistent brands.
Website, advertising, social media, delivery and packaging, and product UX are usually touchpoints of customers, and it is where the brand should reinforce its identity. When it comes to brand positioning, all of it matters, thereby making it essential for the organization to make everything work together.
3. Ensure Buy-In Internally:
Every individual involved in defining the brand personality should be on the same page. When every employee works towards amplifying the brand with the same motivation and mindset, their engagement with their clients is elevated.
*** (research done by Slack indicates that 80% of the employees want to understand how their employer makes decisions) ***
4. Engage with Customers:
Be proactive in asking for feedback from your customers and or connecting with your target audience in social events or virtual events. This is to understand better how they perceive your brand positioning and address the gaps in the process.
5. Develop your visual Identity:
The visual elements of the brand, such as imagery, logo, and color, should be aligned with the brand positioning to create a cohesive brand image. It is not about using the logo everywhere; for example, if the product you are selling is about sophistication and luxury, then the visuals you create should convey exclusivity and elegance. Similarly, when a brand is fun and approachable, smiling faces and happy colors are great for the visuals. It is extremely important to align the visuals with the brand positioning, as 65% of the audience are visual learners.
6. Employee Training:
Keep educating your employees at regular intervals so that they can communicate about the brand positioning in every interaction with their customers.
This is how you communicate your “brand position” to your target audience. But, you might wonder how we will know the effectiveness of the communication. Well, it is simple, as below are the tactics to measure how well your brand positioning strategies are progressing.
In What Ways Should You Measure the Success of Brand Positioning?
Measuring the success of the project provides an opportunity to find breaches in the process and make necessary improvements.
Here are the five parameters that you need to measure the success of the brand positioning strategies;
- Customer Feedback: Customers have a specific sentiment towards your brand, and you need to be aware of it. Do a good job when it comes to collecting reviews and testimonials.
- Competitive Analysis: With SWOT analysis, identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of your organization. Do the same for your competitors and then compare your brand positioning metrics.
- Brand Awareness: To gauge the awareness of your brand positioning through social media mentions, brand recall, and website traffic. To know how well your target audience understands your brand.
- Brand Perception Survey: Conduct surveys to gather more insightful knowledge about how your target audience perceives your brand. Do it at a regular interval and track the changes over time.
- Sales Data and Revenue: The ulterior motive for any change done to the brand is to increase revenue; therefore, the sales data and revenue trends should be analyzed. To understand whether brand positioning strategies have impacted customer retention and customer acquisition rate.
Analyze the results derived from measuring these parameters over some time and compensate it with the improvement tips provided below. Businesses must measure their brand-positioning approaches as 3 out of 5 organizations study the data derived from different campaigns running within the organization to drive innovation.
How to Improve Brand Positioning?
Living in a world that is constantly updating, your brand also needs constant updates and monitoring.
Here are a few impactful tips for brand positioning strategies.
- Feedback Loop: You can never have enough feedback, which is why you need to establish a feedback loop with your stakeholders, customers, and employees to refine your brand positioning with the feedback you have received.
- Adaptability: Always stay agile and adaptive to new possibilities; it will be easier for your business to adjust its brand positioning based on market feedback and the changing business landscape.
- Market Research: Do necessary audits every 6-12 months to re-assess the market and implement the required changes and updates. You are enabling your business to learn about customer needs, competitor strategies, and industry trends.
- Brand Pyramid: Take a pyramid approach to promote your brand position strategies. Start with the product attributes that innovatively differentiate your brand, the functional benefits of those attributes, and the emotional benefits of the attributes, and then focus on brand persona and brand presence. Iterate the same a regular interval to understand about the effectiveness of brand positioning.
These four tips are all you need to improve your existing or new brand positioning strategies.
Conclusion:
Unfortunately, most organizations are ill-positioned in the marketplace today. Most of the time, it is due to existing marketing challenges or their brand positioning strategies not being adequate. If you are one of those organizations, finding it difficult to establish a brand position. Then, it is time to invest your company resources in brand-positing strategies (differentiation-based positioning strategy, value-based positioning strategy, quality-based positioning strategy, and the other strategies mentioned above) to give your prospects a specific reason to connect with your brand and eventually invest in the product/services you offer.
The right application of brand positioning strategies will bring in new clients within a limited period. So, all you have to do is summon a little courage to take the first step.
