(With Examples)
The way you position your brand will have one of the single greatest impacts on your brand’s trajectory.
Whether you’re launching an entirely new brand, doing a brand extension, or repositioning an existing brand, positioning can’t be overlooked.
It’s like the grill to a great steak. You can cook and eat a steak without a grill, but it’s not going to have all that flavor, juiciness, and it won’t leave you wanting to come back for more.
Your brand positioning is THAT GRILL. 🥩👨🍳
It’s the extra *oomph* to take you from “Just another CRM” to HubSpot or “Just another bottled water” to Liquid Death or “Just another virtual event” to Marketingland.
You get the point, but HOW do we execute this??
So glad you asked LOL, here is a step-by-step brand positioning framework (I used this religiously at SnackNation and ServiceTitan).
1️⃣. Knowing Your Audience:
Don’t roll your eyes at this one, every Marketer and their mother is probably telling you this, but you literally can’t position your brand effectively if you don’t know who you’re positioning for.
Get into the minds of your customers, your ideal customers. We’re talking demographics, psychographics, behavior patterns, understanding what makes them TICK, and how they make purchasing decisions.
Surveys and interviews will be your best friend here. Take those insights, build detailed customer personas.
If you’re targeting young professionals in an urban area with kids under the age of 5, your positioning for your soap brand might be centered around skin sensitivity. Whereas if you’re targeting retirees in rural areas, your positioning might be around cost-effectiveness.
2️⃣. Researching the Competition:
What does the competitive landscape look like? Who are the different players? What are their resources? Where are they winning? Where are they losing?
Once you know who your audience is, it’s time to understand who else is trying to take their attention. It’s the biggest priority for you as a brand when you’re trying to find opportunities to differentiate.
If you’re Monday.com, ClickUp is a large direct competitor and Notion would be a reasonable indirect competitor. Their branding, their messaging, their CUSTOMER JOURNEY, study it all.
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This will inform your team where the opportunity to swoop in and take a chunk of market share would be.
3️⃣. Identifying Your Unique Value Prop:
Your unique value prop will become the heart of your brand messaging. It makes your brand unique and tells your target audience why they should choose you over the competition.
Mailchimp’s got it FRONT and CENTER on their site. 👇
This shows their unique value prop in two forms, one being how they’re different from competitors like Constant Contact and two how they’re different from channel competitors like SMS.
Email -> Revenue.
The research of your audience and your competitors really pays off here. Your unique value prop shouldn’t be ANYTHING other than what resonates deeply with your ICP and shows you in a different light than your competitors.
It’s not just about functional benefits, emotional appeal can play a huge role. How does your brand make people feel? What does it stand for? These can turn a good value prop into a great one.
4️⃣. Developing Your Brand Positioning Statement:
Think of it as a concise summary of your positioning strategy. It should clearly communicate your target audience, the market category you’re competing in, your brand promise, and (don’t forget this part) the reason why your audience should believe in that promise.
Here’s a little template to get you started:
For [insert your audience], [insert brand name] is the [insert market definition of your product or service] that provides [insert brand promise] because [insert captivating piece that will give your ICP a reason to believe that brand promise].
Just using a simple template like that will help get you thinking.
5️⃣. Mapping Your Positioning:
It’s all about visualizing where your brand stands in the market, think of it like a MAP 🗺️ (hence the mapping your positioning lol).
Plot your brand alongside your competitors based on the key attributes that matter to your audience. This will help you see if there’s a clear space where your brand can dominate.
Mapping your brand is not a one time exercise. As your brand evolves you’ll need to revisit this map to make sure your positioning stays relative.
6️⃣. Communicating Your Positioning CONSISTENTLY:
Once you have a clear positioning, consistency is key. Every touchpoint with your customers needs to reinforce your positioning.
Align visual identity, tone of voice, messaging, customer experience, all with your brand promise. Create a brand messaging framework that outlines how your brand’s voice and tone should be used across every channel, so that YOU don’t have to be the one executing everything and other members of your team can confidently take things off your plate.
And I’ll just show you quickly how we do it here at TMM. This is a sneak peek at our welcome email flow to The Marketing Millennials newsletter.
So if you subscribe to the newsletter you’re hit with this email in your inbox within 30 seconds.
See how the branding, the copy, the subject line, it all feels THE SAME as when I write these weekly emails?
The same goes for website copy, take a look. 👇
“Marketing Besties” is not just some cute name we use to reference our community (I mean it is cute and you’re our Marketing Bestie), it’s a STRATEGIC move that we’ve reinforced across all of our touchpoints as a brand.
Remember, we’re building consistency because consistency builds trust with your customers and trust builds loyalty. And nothing beats having a raving army of loyal fans, just ask Taylor Swift.
7️⃣. Monitoring Your Positioning:
A brand is a living-breathing entity, your market isn’t static and your brand positioning absolutely SHOULDN’T be.
Regularly monitor how your brand is perceived by your target audience, keep an eye on what your competitors are doing, and identify how your audience is changing.
The goal is to maintain positioning that resonates with your audience, even as their needs and the market involves.
As a Marketer I challenge you to get to know your brand positioning like you know your favorite song.
Study it, the more aligned you are day-to-day with your brand positioning, the easier it will be to stomp out that competitor that just moved into the office across the street from ya.
