What is Brand Positioning? 9 basic ways of Brand Positioning | Red Onion – Brand Consulting

What is Brand Positioning?

 

Philip Kotler, the father of modern marketing, defined “brand positioning is a collection of activities which aim at giving the product and product brand a defined position (compared to their competitors) in the mind of the customers”. Besides, there are many definitions of brand positioning which are based on many different perspectives and views of experts. Basically, all these definitions refer to the need for a brand to stand out of the crowd in a map of other brands that are jostling in the battle for consumers’ preference.

Like brand image, brand positioning is not only what you convey to customers, but also how your customers feel about your brand. With a good positioning strategy, your brand will be different from your competitors, and gain an important position in the minds of consumers.

The benefits of Brand Positioning

 

Brand Differentiation

In any industry, the differentiation creates a great advantage for your brand. And positioning is the most important foundation for this advantage. Enterprises use positioning to convey that they can solve specific problems and needs in a special way that customers cannot experience elsewhere. Based on the enterprise’s strategy and brand strategy, positioning will be conducted to express the values ​​and messages that these two strategies want to convey. In general, enterprises only need a short positioning statement to convey almost the entire core message of differentiation, thereby spreading to other touch points to build a unified and strong brand identification system. It can be said that the most important role of brand positioning is to create differentiation.

Winning customers’ heart

With a good positioning strategy, brands can win over consumers’ mind and heart. When a positioning successfully conveys the core message, it will help shape the brand in the minds of people, helping them understand who the brand is and is right for them. From there, the brand will win over the hearts of those who feel right for it. Imagine your brand is positioned as a professional entrepreneur, operating in the middle and high-end segment. At that time, business owners, people with good incomes will have faith in the brand, because they feel the similarity with this model, they understand and implicitly set that brand in a certain position in their mind.

Positioning is also a part of brand identity, which helps customers distinguish your brand among countless other competitors, it creates an invisible link between the brand and consumers. Through a sense of positioning, they realize that the value of the brand is in line with their desires, they realize that the brand is a friend that they can trust.

Create a competitive advantage

Once you have won customers’ heart, the brand will have a great competitive advantage in the market to increase sales, expand market share or lead the market. A clear positioning will convey the advantage of the product and the way the product benefits consumers, so it will shorten the time of their purchase decision. Since then, the value of the brand will increase thanks to the growing consumer confidence; you will no longer have to depend too much on the price competition when you have a solid position in the mind of consumers, making them buy goods despite other competitors’ offers.

Ways of Brand Positioning

 

Basically, there are 9 ways to build positioning for your brand:

Based on quality:

Based on value

Based on the feature

Positioning based on relationship

Positioning based on wishes

Positioning based on a problem / solution

Positioning based on opponents

Positioning based on emotions

Positioning based on usage 

 

Typically, to achieve a successful positioning, a brand needs to perform the following steps:

1. External research: an overview of the market, a map of brands operating in the segment, identifying their competitors and strategies, understanding the target customers.
2. Internal research: internal analysis of enterprises: objectives, visions, operational situation, strengths, weaknesses … combined research of enterprise’s products and products on the market.
3. Positioning ruler: use the criteria to evaluate the opponent and the brand itself, make a chart to determine the position that the brand wants to reach.
4. Strategy: Based on the above analysis, businesses can identify customer needs, competitors’ activities, their capabilities and find gaps that the market has not met. From there, decide the positioning plan to fill that gap, ensuring the product fits market.