Creating a brand positioning strategy
Taylor Humphrey
·May 21, 2024
Brand positioning is a key aspect of any successful marketing strategy. It involves defining how your brand stands out from competitors and resonates with your target audience. In today’s highly competitive market, having a strong brand positioning strategy can elevate your business above your competition. By connecting your brand in your customers’ minds to your key differentiator, you’ll be able to stand apart from competitors offering similar products, even at lower price points.
Take Zappos as an example of a brand that has centered its brand positioning around high-quality customer service. Early on during the ecommerce boom, the shoe and clothing brand made headlines for their all-in approach to customer service: In addition to free shipping and returns, the brand provided 24-7 customer support by phone, in which customers were encouraged to chat with their reps for as long as they wanted. In fact, one call clocked in at a record-breaking 10 hours. During the pandemic, they even launched a hotline where they encouraged people (customers or not) to call in and chat about anything on their minds.
Because of stories like these, Zappos has established a huge level of trust in its brand, building loyalty among customers who love their commitment to empathy.
Want to build a brand that fosters customer loyalty and advocacy too? Starting out with a strong brand positioning strategy will help set you apart from competitors and convince customers why they should stand behind your business.
Understanding your target audience
Before you can create a strong brand positioning strategy, it’s essential to get to know your target audience. Who are the people that your product or service appeals to? What are their needs, preferences, and behaviors? Conducting market research and analyzing data can help you gain a deeper understanding of your target audience.
Some key factors to consider when defining your target audience are:
- Demographics (age, gender, income level)
- Psychographics (values, beliefs, lifestyle)
- Purchase behavior (what influences their buying decisions?)
Once you have a clear understanding of your target audience, you can tailor your brand positioning strategy to effectively resonate with them. For instance, if you’re targeting Gen Z and Millennial consumers, they’re highly concerned with sustainability and renewable resources. By showcasing your commitment to using renewable resources in your products, building a sustainable shipping and reverse logistics path, and committing to nonprofits that support climate action, you’ll be able to align with their values and win over their business.
Evaluating your competition
Another crucial step in creating a brand positioning strategy is evaluating your competition. Understanding how your competitors are positioning their brands can help you differentiate and stand out in the market. Some questions to consider when analyzing your competition are:
- What unique value does each competitor offer?
- How does their brand messaging differ from yours?
- What are their strengths and weaknesses?
Beyond looking at their brand messaging, pay attention to how they’re perceived in the market. What are customers saying about them in their reviews and on social media channels? How does their manufacturing process, pricing, and customer support vary from yours? What product lines do they offer that you don’t, or vice versa? When conducting research, it can be helpful to build out competitive scorecards that analyze each of your key competitors against certain factors to determine where each brand stands out or falls behind.
Defining your unique selling proposition (USP)
Once you’ve analyzed your industry landscape in detail, you should be able to more clearly see where your brand has a unique advantage. In other words, what makes you, you?
This will vary based on your brand, but it may fall into one of these buckets:
- Product quality
If you’re a jewelry designer, how can you ensure that customers will choose to pay more for your brand over cheaper competitors? Focus on the quality of your gemstones, your unique designs, and showcase photos and videos of your process and design philosophy to ensure that customers associate your brand with luxury. - Customer service
Prioritizing customer satisfaction can mean offering elements such as free shipping, free and easy returns and exchanges, immediate access to customer support, and a great product warranty that ensures that you stand behind your products. While a personal touch is important, there’s also room for automation to help you put manual tasks on autopilot so you can offer your customers who need hands-on support the time that they deserve. - Values/Identity
If you’re seeking out customers who align with your values or a particular identity, make sure to spotlight what drives you. If your focus is sustainability, focus on how you commit to carbon neutrality and sustainable resources throughout your supply chain. If you’re a BIPOC business owner, showcase your commitment to supporting other Black artisans and communities of color. By spotlighting who you are and what your brand represents, you’ll be able to connect with a group of passionate customers who believe in your business.
Crafting your brand messaging
Once you’ve developed your USP, it’s important to spotlight it across all of your brand messaging and marketing campaigns.
Consider developing a powerful tagline that you can associate with your brand that summarizes key elements of your brand positioning, and helps your customers immediately understand who you are. All of your marketing materials should be built around your brand positioning, including your website copy and design, your mobile app, your email newsletters, your social media content, and your advertising campaigns. You can conduct A/B testing to see which elements of your messaging are resonating the most with customers, and optimize your branded content to prioritize those key elements.
If you sell your products to an international market, you may need to modify your content depending on your target audience, and align the message to each geographic market’s priorities while ensuring that your brand values are well represented.
By creating a well-aligned messaging strategy, you’ll be able to create a consistent and cohesive approach to marketing your brand to the exact type of customers you know will be interested in your products—helping you build a passionate customer base that will stay committed to your brand through the years to come.
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