Brand positioning is the process of placing your company in the mind of your customer. And this is why it must feature in your marketing strategy.
Brand positioning – it sounds like something that you’d expect from a preacher or the charismatic cult leader known for hanging out with the Beatles in the 70s, not marketing professionals.
Yet, while the aim may not be to rob you of your life savings or lead you into a life of anti-social behaviour, getting into the minds of potential customers is actually an essential part of marketplace positioning.
It’s called brand positioning, and it is the strategic process of placing and positioning your company in the mind of your customer and potential customer.
Brand positioning creates a thought process, both conscious and subconscious, that your customers experience when they see your logo, hear your jingle, or drive past your store – and every aspect of your marketing strategy and plan supports it.
What is brand positioning?
Brand positioning answers the three essential questions every marketing campaign should address: What is the issue being experienced by the customer? How can my product or service address it? Why are we the best company to resolve it?
Essentially, brand positioning establishes your company as credible, your product or service as superior, and your company different to its competitors.
Imagine you own a football club. There are 23 other clubs in the league vying for the sporting public’s membership dollar. You might decide to position your club’s brand as the ‘family club’, which would set yourself apart from the others and tap into a new revenue source.
Your marketing materials feature kids and mums and dads, you hold family days at the club, your customer-facing people say ‘hi!’ to the kids, not just the parents, and every radio and TV commercial voice over describes you in terms of being family-friendly.
Eventually, whenever anyone sees your branding or hears mention of your club, they think ‘family club’. This is brand positioning.
How does brand positioning work?
There are many ways marketers build brand positioning.
Some companies’ brand proposition is that they are inexpensive, which is a strategy that taps into the most basic of consumer needs: to spend as little as possible.
For the first 25 years of its existence, Bunnings Warehouse successfully used the phrase ‘lowest prices are just the beginning’ as the central message to its brand positioning.
Setting your brand apart from its competitors is an essential part of brand positioning.
Coca-Cola has long differentiated itself from other soft drink manufacturers by projecting itself as the original. Campaigns often feature retro images, especially around Christmas when consumers are more sensitive to sentimentality, incorporating the brand’s distinctive logo and dynamic ribbon, instilling in the mind of the consumer that when they choose Coca-Cola, they’re choosing the real deal.
Other companies grab perceived drawbacks of their company and turn them into a proud feature of their brand.
While Aldi supermarkets have always appealed to the price-conscious consumer, the company recognised that some potential customers were being turned away by the unknown brands they stocked. ‘Good. Different’ is now the company’s brand position.
What are the benefits of brand positioning?
Strong brand positioning doesn’t just make your logo and brand assets recognisable or promote certain feelings about your product or service – it has tangible, bottom-line benefits.
Solid brand positioning makes encouraging customers through the buying cycle easier and quicker. The consideration phase is generally shorter because the customer already knows what you offer and why it is superior to your competitors. This increases sales conversions.
It also creates a springboard for other marketing activity. Customers already have a connection and an understanding of the values and offerings of the company, which can be leveraged in future campaigns.
Importantly, brand positioning builds relationships with customers and potential customers. You’re not a stranger in the street; you are someone they know and trust; you’re different to the others. They are comfortable with you and ready to hear what you have to say.
Call in the branding experts
Creating effective brand positioning requires a deep understanding of not just your business and its offerings, but how consumers process and interact with marketing messages.
Assemblo is a full-service marketing agency based in Melbourne with a proven track record of creating unique and effective brand positioning resulting in significant bottom line growth.
To find out how we can help your business, give us a call on (03) 9079 2555, or send us a note via the contact form below.