What is brand positioning?
Brand positioning is the strategic steps you take to create a positive perception of your business in the minds of your customers. It’s how you position your solution against competitors in the market and endeavour to make yours more favourable.
Brand positioning is what you want your brand to be known for. It’s the way you connect and communicate your products and services to your customers. With a goal of creating a desire to purchase that leads to advocacy. Successful brand positioning is meeting the needs of your customer better than any other competitor in the market.
In their book, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, Al Ries and Jack Trout talk about, “How to make and position an industry leader so that its name and message wheedles its way into the collective subconscious of your market and stays there.”
Sounds easy right? Brand positioning is basically mind control.
Why is brand positioning important?
A brand positioning strategy is a well researched plan to scale your business and achieve your desired market share. The more minds your brand can influence, the more referrals, word of mouth, and brand awareness your business will have. How you position your brand and how you wheedle your way into your customers minds is key to your brand growth strategy.


What is an example of brand positioning?
In New Zealand, this could be as simple as, “where everyone gets a bargain.” We all know that’s The Warehouse, not just because of the catchy jingle, but we honestly feel like we can go to The Warehouse to get a bargain. They know their customers want a bargain, so that’s what they deliver to the market and position their brand accordingly.
Brand positioning is the proof of a company living their values and delivering on their promises. As The Warehouse says on their website page, Here for Good, “…we are committed to making sustainable living easy and affordable for everyone.” Although, it’s not just what they publish on their website, it’s how their brand has been positioned in our minds. Next time you’re in need of an affordable piece of homeware, clothing or halloween costume – where do you instantly think of? The Warehouse!
What is a brand positioning strategy?
A brand positioning strategy aims to increase customer loyalty, brand equity, and the willingness of customers to purchase from your business. The Branding Journal defines a brand positioning strategy as a combination of customer wants, business capabilities, and competitors in the market. These three components of your brand positioning strategy involve quite a bit of thought and require ongoing consideration as the market changes.
Let’s break each of these down further.


Customers
Your brand is what your customers think, not what you say.
If you’re wanting to wheedle your brand into the minds of your customers, you better have a good understanding of what they want. Knowing the needs and desires of your customers is how you develop better solutions to their problems and create messaging that resonates with them. Your first step to building a brand positioning strategy is to gather insights.
Customers won’t pay attention to things that don’t offer them something they need. You want your messaging to be thumb-stopping and not to ‘feel like marketing’ but be something that is useful and of value to your customers. Be the solution they would love to tell all their friends about.
Market research and digital surveys are a great way to understand your customers and build your personas. However, the best form of customer research is to go out and actually speak to them, face-to-face. Hear straight from the horse’s mouth! Take this opportunity to ask questions about their problems. Don’t talk about your solution, you aren’t there to sell them anything, you’re there to listen to them.
Capture the words they use to describe their frustrations and use them in your marketing. Ask them what they know and think of your brand, what they like or dislike about your brand, and how they feel about competitor brands in the market.
This is valuable research and a crucial component of your brand positioning strategy. Don’t just talk about your promises to solve their problems. Prove to them in all your brand behaviour that you are true to your messaging and make sure you can deliver the solution.
Capabilities
Make sure your business has the capability to deliver on your strategy.
It’s one thing to define a brand positioning strategy but if you cannot commit the necessary resources and time to delivering it, you will never reach the position you are aiming for. For example, say you want your brand to be in the top five choices in your product category. You learn how your customers think, you find out what their problems are and you come up with a new product and a marketing plan to go to market. But, then you get swamped by running your business and serving your existing customers. What about those positioning goals? What about the growth forecast you’ve sold to your investors?
With any strategy, it’s not just about the actions of how you are going to achieve your goal, more importantly it’s how you are going to find the resources and funds to deliver the strategy.
Don’t let your hard earned research and strategic ideas go to waste, build a plan and resource it appropriately. This may involve out-sourcing some of the deliverables, which can be a great way to access talent you might not have in-house. Grow your brand equity by ensuring your strategy is resourced appropriately.
Competitors
Differentiate your solution against competitors in the market.
Think about your customers and their decision making journey, how do they research problems and find information? By following their journey you can easily see who else is in the market offering a similar solution to you.
Desktop research is a simple place to begin and can give you an idea of what your customers might see during their research. This involves a little bit of snooping, it’s not cheating to look over your shoulder to see what the other guy wrote for question 3. It’s a necessary part of competitor research and developing your brand positioning strategy.
Compare your offerings, features, and how they describe their solution. What language do they use and what promises do they make? You can learn a lot from a humble laptop and a few hours of googling. Don’t feel disheartened if you find out your competitors are doing the same thing as you. Use this information to fuel your positioning and differentiate your brand from the competition.
Strategically position your brand for the customer, become the preferred option and meet their needs better than any competitor in the market.

