Brand positioning is the art of crafting a memorable impression in the minds of your target audience. Achieving this creates a unique brand position and facilitates the long-term goal of influencing buying behavior. This differs from standard marketing material or promotional content about your products or services, which conveys a specific value proposition (e.g. “Toothpaste brand ‘B’ makes your teeth whiter”). Instead, effective brand positioning focuses on establishing a strong brand identity in the customers’ minds.
In brand positioning, the focus is on the perceived value and personality of your brand as a whole (e.g. “Toothpaste brand ‘B’ is about building confidence in your everyday life”). By highlighting your brand personality, you differentiate yourself from the competition.
Cultivating a compelling brand identity is a superpower. It’s your business’s chance to truly differentiate itself — especially in saturated markets where product positioning and value aren’t always remarkably distinct from competitor to competitor. A powerful brand positioning strategy allows you to stand out and resonate with potential customers.
Brand positioning can also create a resonant brand perception in the minds of your target market that transcends competitive pricing. By successfully marketing your brand as an online portfolio maker, you can showcase the value of your entire product portfolio in one fell swoop. An effective brand positioning strategy communicates your brand promise and builds equity. This, in turn, enhances your brand recognition and fosters brand loyalty. Success at selling your brand means success at selling your entire product portfolio’s value.
How To Position Your Brand Effectively
Start with the Brand Positioning Statement
Any successful brand positioning strategy will typically have certain well-defined traits, the first of which is a clear brand positioning statement.
What is a brand positioning statement? It’s a concise, clearly written statement about what sets your brand apart from the competition, highlighting your brand’s unique value and personality. For example:
- Our teeth whitening products don’t just hide tartar and plaque with staining agents; they lift it away so you can have a smile that’s as healthy as it is bright.
- We don’t just sell affordable, on-demand disaster recovery services; we sell peace of mind for small-business owners who love what they do.
You’ll find no shortage of templates on the web with fill-in-the-blank-style guidance, like this one from TechTarget:
“For (target customer) who (statement of the need or opportunity), the (product name) is a (product category) that (statement of key benefit — that is, compelling reason to buy). Unlike (primary competitive alternative), our product (statement of primary differentiation).”
While these templates can be a helpful starting point for developing your brand positioning framework, our advice is to use them to get the ball rolling, but don’t simply fill in the blanks and call it your brand positioning statement. Instead, aim to create a statement that truly captures your brand’s personality and resonates with your target customers, enhancing building brand equity. As TechTarget explains, one of the early examples of a noteworthy brand positioning statement is “Avis is only number 2. We try harder.”
In this case, Avis has created a brand positioning statement that is pithy, powerful and memorable enough to be a customer-facing tagline. Strong brand positioning like this conveys the unique selling proposition of Avis and also strengthens their brand identity.
The utility of any statement is primarily as a guide for your overall brand positioning strategy. All future brand positioning and brand awareness content should act as an offshoot of that statement, ensuring consistency in your brand messaging across all marketing materials and campaigns.
Creating Brand Positioning Content
This brings us to the meat of your brand positioning campaigns: content creation and brand building. Your company’s goal should be to create content that accentuates the value of your brand, enhances brand perception and ultimately fosters brand loyalty among your target audience. Typically, a strong brand positioning concept will have a very specific angle and objective. Some of the most common types of brand positioning campaigns include:
Competitive brand positioning: This brand strategy involves going after the competition directly. It might call out a competitor by name, such as by providing a direct cost comparison on an infographic. However, it can also attempt to trounce the competition’s bargain prices by demonstrating the superior quality of its products. This market positioning strategy focuses on highlighting the advantages of your brand over others, emphasizing your unique selling propositions and reinforcing your brand’s position in the marketplace.
Quality brand positioning: This type of brand positioning is super useful for brands that consider themselves “luxury,” “premium” or “customer-centric” and want to use that as a marketing edge. For example, this Whole Foods ad positions the grocer as redefining the market with high-quality products.
This quality-based positioning aims to associate Whole Foods with superior quality and value, enhancing its brand perception and appealing to customers who prioritize excellence over price. By reinforcing your brand promise of exceptional quality, you can build brand equity and encourage long-term brand loyalty.
Problem-Solution Positioning: This is the positioning of your brand as the solution to a specific problem. In a B2B setting, case study content is especially useful as social proof to show the value of your brand. Testimonials and case studies can provide the high-level benefits of your service offerings but can also hone in on a specific issue to demonstrate value at a more granular level. This approach strengthens your brand’s position as a trusted problem-solver, enhancing brand recognition and reinforcing your brand identity as an industry leader.
Human Interest Positioning: Consider the example of a disaster recovery vendor that serves small businesses. The company could do human-interest profiles (in video or text) that narrate the company’s everyday processes and the importance that data plays in those operations. For example, think of a small independent medical practice that serves a rural community. These types of profiles accomplish two things:
- Show how a brand solves problems for its customers.
- Humanize a business problem by demonstrating how the brand’s value affects real people’s lives.
The human interest angle is powerful because it gives you a chance to focus on brand values in a way your traditional marketing collateral might not. This marketing strategy connects with audiences on an emotional level, fostering stronger brand loyalty and making your brand personality more relatable.
Bear in mind, there are plenty of other ways to highlight the value of your competitive advantage and to amplify your brand image, so don’t feel obligated to pigeonhole your efforts into one of the above categories.
Your branding strategy should be flexible, allowing you to adapt your brand messaging to different contexts and audiences. The key is to maintain consistency in your brand architecture and ensure that all elements of your marketing material work together to strengthen your overall brand value.
And remember: The goal of brand positioning is to assert the strength of your brand identity. Don’t get bogged down by trying to say too much at once.
The Payoff: Brand Awareness, Earned Media and Customer Loyalty
The main advantage of strong brand positioning is the development of a unique brand identity that will help your target customers pick you out from the pack. It’s your chance to give your company a personality that will make a lasting impression on your audience. By establishing a strong brand position in the market, you can make your brand name synonymous with quality and trust.
With the help of social media, your brand positioning content is also a great opportunity to generate earned media. If you create something compelling, clever, or helpful to your target audience, they will share it with their networks. This conversion of users into brand advocates is the very definition of earned media.
Leveraging social media marketing in your digital branding efforts can amplify your brand messaging and reach any potential customer you might not have accessed through a traditional marketing campaign. This not only increases brand awareness but also strengthens brand equity.
And finally, it’s like we said. If you sell your audience on your brand, you sell your entire product portfolio in one fell swoop. If they like your values, and they feel your offerings deliver on those values, you know exactly where they’ll go next time they need something that you’re selling.
Loyalty is hard to find, but by definition, it’s also hard to lose. Position your brand wisely, and you will earn a place in your customers’ minds.
Editor’s Note: Updated December 2024.
