Brands are competing across numerous platforms – hello, Threads – with a multitude of competitors for consumers’ attention and strong market positioning. With increasingly saturated markets across various industries, both B2C and B2B, its more crucial than ever for organizations to achieve successful brand positioning offering a consistent value proposition and not be another tagline or logo that customers confuse for another.
What is brand positioning?
Brand positioning is a strategy to differentiate yourself from competitors and create loyal customers for your brand – with the goal of bringing awareness of your brand into the mind of your target audience.
You can communicate your brand position through various means including social media, marketing, brand managers and assets, and customer service. However, a marketing strategy without the foundation of a strong mission statement and brand promise, or what a customer can expect to receive interacting with a company, can fail to achieve effective brand positioning for their target market. Establishing consumer perception of trust is critical to your brand’s position.
Why is it important?
In order to move forward with a strong brand positioning strategy, clear communication of your brand’s value and identity is crucial. Although technical language may make more sense for branding to internal employees or very knowledgeable industry members, if a tagline is only understood by select individuals it’s extremely difficult to build a broader reputation that is easily recognized. Your value proposition should be the most important information relayed to a customer in order for them to understand and be interested in buying a product or service from your business.
To differentiate yourself against competitors and appeal positively to customers, your brand positioning statement must be understandable and create a positive reaction in the consumer’s mind. By conducting market research to better understand your customers and your competition, you can then build a brand strategy that allows your company to be unique and relevant.
Related: 4 Easy Tips to Up-Level Your Thought Leadership Strategy With Market Research
How to build a brand positioning map
Brand mapping is an effective tool and helps to display your brand’s position and unique value to customers among competitors by visually plotting brands in a specific category against different axes representing attributes of brand perception. For example, a typical framework used is low to high price on one axis and low to high quality on the other. By gaining a better understanding of your existing position, you can be better informed to create a successful brand strategy.
After successfully creating a brand positioning framework and getting every member of your brand on the same page, then can you execute your positioning strategy. With an effective brand position, you can successfully communicate value proposition and build brand awareness.
Additionally, companies not only have to differentiate themselves from their competitors but have to do so strategically by finding the balance between centrality and distinctiveness in their brand category.
How does social media play a role in brand positioning?
Social media has created access to massive audiences for both customers and companies unlike ever before. Now, not only do massive global brands with substantial marketing budgets have large audiences, but any company with a strong message using the right content marketing and social media tools can reach them. TikTok has become a platform for small business owners to market their products or services with millions of views, playing alongside the largest companies in the world.
To successfully position your brand on social media platforms, keeping your target customer and positioning strategy top of mind in every single post, profile, and customer interaction is crucial to maintain trust and brand loyalty. In addition to brands having access to large audiences, so do customers. Conversations on social media move at light speed, and for that reason a single negative post or interaction can have an extreme impact and disrupt trust and brand position that your company has achieved.
Your brand strategy should dictate the way you consistently communicate your brand’s identity across digital platform media and highlight your value proposition.
Moving forward
Although there are many different strategies and architectures to effectively position your brand, being authentic is key. With so many brands in various markets and a growing number of platforms and mediums to communicate your positioning statement, holding your company to established values and principles for the services or products you provide is essential to maintain your brand position.
Need help setting yourself apart from your competitors? Contact our team of experts today.
