Brand Positioning and Business Success
It is essential to have a strong brand position in today's competitive market. Your customers are investing in your business and want to know what they can expect from you. The first step towards creating a powerful brand is understanding who you are and what makes your business unique. Once you have defined this, the following steps will be easy.
Every company, no matter how large or small, should be able to answer these two questions.
1. Who Are You?
2. What Do You Stand For?
Once you realize your business's core and communicate effectively, customers will become loyal advocates. The more relevant your message is to their needs, the more likely they will recommend you to others and engage with your brand.
However, keeping your customers engaged is not easy; it requires much thought and planning.
What Is Brand Positioning?
Brand positioning is a strategic marketing technique that helps differentiate your business from your competitors. It allows you to identify and communicate what differentiates you from others so that customers can visualize the value of using your brand over another.
This process requires thinking beyond product features and amenities such as price, customer service, additional products, and more. It requires a business to think and communicate its identity, the actual value of its product or service, and the experience it will receive from you.
Through positioning, businesses can communicate what makes them unique and invaluable by sharing their brand's abilities rather than their competitors.
The Importance of Brand Positioning
1. Helping to Define Your Target Market
A strong brand will help communicate a business's identity and promote the difference between them and its competitors. This is because it focuses on your company's core or product, making it unique from similar products or services. To position yourself as a market leader, you need to know your target market to communicate your message more effectively.
2. Differentiate Yourself from the Competition
Competing on price alone is a sure way to fail in today's market, where customers constantly search for value and quality. It is essential to analyze and compare yourself with your competitors and determine how you can best stand out. This is where competitive benchmarking comes into play; by researching your competitors, you will determine what makes you different and highlight this in your business development initiatives.
3. Make the Buying Process Easier For Customers
Positioning yourself as an authority within your industry is a great way to make things easier for your customers. By providing customers with information on how they can use what you offer to their advantage, you are helping them make an easier decision that would eventually benefit them in the long run. For example, if you were selling a new type of software, it would be beneficial to provide businesses with case studies showing successful companies that have used similar software to achieve their goals.
4. Create a Clear and Consistent Brand Experience
A solid brand can communicate more efficiently with your target market through various touchpoints such as marketing materials, social media sites, online ads, etc. This allows you to create a clear message communicated consistently across all platforms or mediums.
5. Increase Customer Loyalty and Retention Rates While Reducing Marketing Costs
A strong brand can help create a stronger customer relationship through better communication, trust, and memorable experiences. This can be further enhanced by creating a consistent experience across all touchpoints mentioned above, allowing the company to retain customers over time and reduce marketing costs in the long run.
6. Decrease Negative Word-Of-Mouth via Great Branding Experiences
A strong brand can help create a unique customer experience, remembered far after the company has delivered its services or products. Suppose you can deliver on your promise and exceed expectations. In that case, the chances are that your customer will speak highly of your business to their network, thus creating positive word-of-mouth mentions.
7. Create Value for Your Products
By having a solid brand, you will communicate the value of your business and its offerings more effectively with your target market by explaining what benefits they can get from your product or service.
8. Decrease Operational Costs
A strong brand can help you to save money by being able to communicate more efficiently and effectively with your target market and customers. By doing this, you will be able to reduce misunderstandings and other issues that arise from miscommunication which would typically cost the business time and money to resolve.
9. Improve Customer Loyalty through Branding Assets Like Company Logos
A strong brand will enable you to communicate better the values your company stands for through brand assets such as logos without always having to mention them verbally, which can cost time and money.
10. Develop a Unique Competitive Advantage in the Marketplace
A strong brand allows you to stand out from competitors and appeal more to your target market. This can be done by creating a memorable customer experience that is consistent across all touchpoints, which will ultimately lead to more conversions and boost your bottom line.
The Difference between Proper Brand Positioning Can Make
1. Create Trust with Customers
A strong brand would help me trust customers when they first see our product or service when pitching it to our target market. This will allow me to get more business overall and save time by not discussing what we do when promoting our service or product.
2. Reduces Operational Cost
A strong brand would also help me decrease operational costs in several business areas, such as advertising, marketing, etc., which can potentially increase profit margins in the long run.
3. Save Time
A strong brand will help me save time, as it would allow us to communicate more efficiently and effectively with our target market and customers. This can be done without always mentioning our company name or logo, which we currently have to do when pitching the business and promoting it on social media.
4. Professional Image
Finally, a strong brand would help develop a more professional image for our company and show our customers that we are here to stay, making them feel confident about doing business with us.
How to Position Your Brand "Business."
Successful brands know their place in the world and position themselves accordingly. This article will show you how to achieve your goal of becoming a successful business.
1. Identify Your Brand's Essential Business
To position your business, you must first know what it's all about. If you're a new start-up company, ask: Who am I? What do I sell? What problem do I solve? Once you've answered these questions, you can proceed to the next step, presenting this to your target market. In other words, what do you want your business to be known as?
2. Ensure Your Positioning Is Accurate
Your brand's position should be accurate because this will create trust amongst target consumers. If, for example, you were to say that 'we are the best without having the evidence to back it up, then how can someone trust you with their money? We all know the customer is always right, so why will they buy from you if you're not on top of your game?
3. Be Unique
What sets you apart from the competition? How will people identify you in this vast marketplace? What would you do differently if your business was to go head-to-head with its prime competitors? What are the main benefits of your products/services? If nothing sets you apart from other businesses in your industry, then perhaps it's time to look at something else.
4. Be Flexible
Businesses need to be flexible when positioning themselves because everything changes very often. For example, in the late 1990s, one of the most well-known fast-food chains in the world used to position itself as being nutritious for children by offering toys with their meals. Then about ten years later, they changed their marketing strategy and instead positioned themselves as junk food but 'fun' for children because they could keep up with the latest trends.
Example of Successful Positioning
There are thousands of ways to position a business, and we can prove it with these few examples:
• The leading telecom provider in the UK – This shows that they're competitive but not the only one. It implies a leading company in the industry and lets the customers know that this business is on top of them or aspires to be.
• Your first choice for reliable healthcare – This tells the public what you provide. Still, it also shows respect by using 'your' instead of 'our.' The latter suggests they're the only ones, whereas the former indicates that there may be another, but you're at least a contender.
• The global leader in online casino gambling – In this case, they position themselves at the top of their industry, creating an image of excellence. But it doesn't stop there, for it also implies that they're global, which means you can gamble with people worldwide.
Positioning Statement Template (Fill in the Blanks)
The positioning statement is something that every company must have. It's your unique selling proposition or differentiator. The positioning statement aims to say who you are and what you do in a way that appeals to your target market.
Conclusion
Your business can communicate your message uniquely, allowing you to stand out from the competition. Understanding what makes your business unique and engaging with customers on this level will help drive customer satisfaction, positively increasing brand advocacy. By achieving this, your customers gain a sense of value that helps them feel appreciated and valued; this is the definition of excellent customer service.
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