Imagine selling homemade pizza to a school cafeteria at lunchtime. The area is full of starving students, there’s a lot of noise, and everyone’s looking around. In such a highly competitive landscape, how can you convince diners to choose you? Through smart brand positioning. It’s a marketing approach that makes your brand noticeable and desirable in a sea of competitors.
A strong market positioning helps potential customers choose you over everyone else. But getting there can be harder than it sounds. An effective strategy requires you to read the minds of consumers, understand the market and competitive dynamics, and make all customer interactions unforgettable.
Look at What the Top Performers Are Doing
Analyzing your major competitors helps you understand their target audiences, strengths, weaknesses, positioning strategies, and how effective these are. You can condense the information through a visual tool called a positioning map, which shows you and the others’ competitive positions. It gives a quick summary of how consumers perceive a brand or a product compared to others.
A competitive analysis lets you identify unfilled opportunities. Understanding what your direct competitors are offering and how they’re communicating their value can help you determine in which areas they’re falling short or where you can offer something distinctly different and better. This exercise provides actionable insights on customer journey, pricing strategy, and service or product marketing.
Market and competitive analysis are two of the most critical tasks in your brand positioning journey. That’s why it takes skills and experience to get it right. You don’t have to do it alone, though. Pore through Sortlist's directory of London branding agencies to establish positive consumer perceptions and elevate your company.
Find Your Unique Advantage
Every successful brand has a ‘secret sauce’, it’s the basis for their marketing efforts. Think about your favorite brands. What makes them stick in your mind? You might have chosen them for their unique products or how you feel using them.
A competitive positioning strategy explains what makes your company’s offerings different and better than your competitors. It can be anything from using eco-friendly materials to providing fast and exceptional customer service.
It’s not enough to be different, though. Put your competitive intelligence to good use by finding your unique selling proposition. Doing so involves offering real benefits that your target market values. Apart from identifying your ideal customers, it helps to have customer segments for whom you can identify problems and solve them.
Note that your advantage can change through the years, depending on consumer preferences. For example, the demand for bariatric surgery in the US has declined as the market shifts to a cheaper and less invasive solution: weight loss drugs. Manufacturers can further widen their lead by citing this new finding, stating that these drugs may be more effective in reducing cancer risk compared to surgery.
Develop Your Positioning Strategy
Snagging a compelling value proposition is only half the battle. Your marketing strategies must relay a cohesive message to your prospective customers to build credibility. Create a clear and effective positioning statement that highlights brand differences. Think of a catchy slogan that instantly tells people what your company is all about.
Keep it Simple
Blogs, videos, and emails are all powerful tools you can use to promote your brand and address customer pain points. Your message should be easy for anyone to understand. Avoid jargon or complicated explanations. More importantly, tell your story in a way that resonates with them to build an emotional connection. Explain the benefits instead of focusing on the product features. Discuss customers’ pain points and how your solutions address them.
Focus on Your Target Audience
Apart from crafting compelling statements, decide where to publish them. Revisit your target market segments and know where you can reach them. Your website and the world’s most popular channels can be a good start, but it pays to consider customer preferences.
A recent study shows the most popular platforms for particular age brackets. Use this alongside other useful insights, like monitoring your competitor’s moves, to make your strategies even better.
Don’t Just Tell, Show It
A strong positioning strategy uses social proof to emphasize a message. Online reviews have replaced word-of-mouth advertising, which a majority of consumers consider when making purchasing decisions. Even so, it’s better to use videos and photos when making customer testimonials or when showing how you get things done. A bakery owner offering custom pastries, for example, can show how to make a uniquely designed cake.
The public’s perception of your brand lies in how well you can express your message and meet customers’ expectations. If you say you’re better than your competitors, you must show proof even before a consumer chooses to transact with you.
Measure Your Performance and Improve
An effective brand positioning strategy isn’t a one and done process. Current market trends change, new competitors pop up, and customer preferences evolve—often alongside technological advances. You can adapt your brand positioning to reflect these changes, but stay true to your core values and deliver on your promises.
Be cohesive and reliable: Consistency plays a crucial role in establishing customer intimacy. Ensure that your messaging and actions match your stated position. If you say you offer superior quality products at the lowest prices, your offerings should reflect that.
See how you stack up: What are your rivals doing? Perform competitor analysis regularly, as there may be important trends you’re missing out on. More importantly, measure your performance. Identify key performance indicators (KPIs) that measure whether your audience understands what you’re offering.
Be willing to adapt: You must tweak your positioning to stay relevant. Apart from focusing on product quality and customer experiences, consider changing your business model to thrive. Today’s most popular online streaming platform, for example, started as a DVD rental company.
Automated marketing tools can provide you with valuable insights into your performance. Still, you need to gather customer feedback. Pay attention to what people are saying online and offline for a deeper look at what’s working and what’s not. Fine-tune your message and presentation or change your positioning tactics if necessary.
Concluding Thoughts
Competitive brand positioning can spell the difference being merely existing and carving out a unique stage for you to dominate. It’s like finding your superpower in a world full of superheroes.
Those who stand out aren’t necessarily the ones who shout the loudest. A brand’s long-term success hinges on pinpointing what makes their offerings special, telling their story effectively and delivering on their promises. Companies must forge meaningful connections with their audiences to become the only brand that matters to them.
