Product positioning is a relatively short statement that depicts the exact place you want your brand to occupy in the mind of the target audience. It follows a standard formula:
Among [target market], [x] is the brand of [frame of reference] that [point of difference] because [reason to believe].
Product positioning is not a course of action, rather, it is a theory that prompts further actions, and a base for the subsequent marketing strategy. It shows what your brand can do for a certain community of people and what makes the product different from other existing alternatives.
The main purpose of formulating a product positioning statement is getting a crystal understanding of what exactly you are offering, who benefits from it most, and why. You can then get closer to solving the following tasks:
If you don’t know your target audience, you might be trying to sell a product to people that do not even need it. Unless you’ve deliberately chosen the right medium to broadcast your message, it will not get noticed. And without the unique selling proposition reflected in that message, you are just another brand among many other businesses.
Product positioning does not guarantee immediate success on all those fronts. Your first few hypotheses might seem in vain. However, if you learn from them and adjust to the feedback from your customers, it can take you far. Keep testing different audience segments, introduce new competitive advantages, or reinforce existing product features, and turn to statistics to find the right market position for your product.
A product positioning statement is short and simple but getting it right requires a lot of preliminary research. A good place to start is to consider the elements that define your brand and the specific product. Look both internally and externally: while the customer should be at the heart of everything you do, your own goals and capacities are also important.
A mission statement is all about where your brand is at right now: the services you offer and the impact you hope to have on people’s daily routines. As the product list changes from time to time, the mission is often revised. Use the message reflected in the brand as a reference for the positioning formula.
Example
From Cradles to Crayons’ mission statement, we can see that the audience of the brand is capped at children aged 12. Therefore, the “target market” in the product positioning statement cannot exceed that age group. It can, however, represent an even smaller segment of it.
A vision statement is an overview of your future objectives as a brand in the span of 5-20 years. Unlike the mission, it does not need to be reviewed as often. Vision is most commonly verb-based (to make, to deliver, to organize, to bring, etc.). It can reflect:
Vision is not directly involved in product positioning, but it is necessary to keep your outlook in mind when launching new products or tools. If your vision contains an audience, it can help narrow down the “target market” part of the positioning statement.
A category represents the segment of the market where different businesses offer the same service. The size of each section is determined by the number of consumers that constitute its audience.
If you create a new product in a large competitive arena, you need a strong point of difference for the positioning formula. And, alternatively, if the segment is so small that you happen to be a category inventor, focus more on defining the “target market” and the “reason to believe” variables.
A tagline is a one-line catchphrase that you associate with your brand and use on your website, blog, and in marketing campaigns. It won’t directly help you with the product positioning formula as it is usually quite vague if taken out of context. The famous “Just Do It” (Nike) slogan alone doesn’t tell us much about the values or products of the company. And yet, if we look at what they sell, the taglines perfectly convey the essence of the brand. Therefore, you can try matching potential positioning statements you come up with to your tagline to see which combination makes the most sense.
A product that makes someone’s life easier is bound to be a success if presented right. Try to identify the areas where your potential customers lack something, and you might find a more pressing market need for your existing product. Most offline businesses had no choice but to adapt their positioning strategies last year during the pandemic restrictions, as their customer challenges had evolved as well.
The “point of difference” is a key component of positioning. Product differentiators can be hard to pinpoint, especially for essential commodities which serve the same purpose. Today’s tendency is to develop strong brand values that correspond to certain segments of the market, making every product under that company appealing. One example is the trend for sustainability: if a business maintains sustainable packaging of all produced goods, there is a specific group of people that will be more receptive no matter what exactly is offered.
Brand essence represents an underlying value or characteristic that translates into everything you do as a brand. It is not directly related to the products you sell, rather, represents an emotion or a feature that can be applied to everything your business does. You can use brand essence to verify, compare, and disregard different positioning statements to narrow them down to the most fitting one.
Once you’ve gone over the elements that constitute your brand, review the common positioning strategies used in marketing to determine the product’s point of difference. All of these approaches aim to create a certain image in the customer’s mind, whether it is a price or a feature, which is exactly what positioning is about.
This strategy focuses on core product characteristics that match your customers’ values. Once you’ve determined the target market, you can think of a feature they essentially look for in a product, besides its basic functionality.
Example
A properly functioning car of any brand can perform its basic functionality: getting you from point A to point B. The difference is in positioning: for example, Volvo is associated with safety, Bugatti — with the thrill of speed, and Volkswagen is a solid choice for families with children. To support that image, Volvo’s website has several sections and testimonials dedicated to safety, like this one:
There are three different pricing positions your brand can occupy in the customer’s mind:
Luxury is often associated with certain personality traits. People who own a high-end product, like a very expensive car or a designer bag, may look like they have more authority, power, and achievements. Having a luxury product can also mean a certain legacy, like in Patek Philippe’s iconic advertising campaign from 1996: “You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation”.
Paired with the previous strategy, you can occupy that sweet spot in the market where your product borders on being above the competition price-wise but is still affordable to the masses.
You can try tying your brand to a certain habit of a customer. Then, focus your marketing efforts on recreating the image of them performing that action and suggesting how your product can help. If you can relate to the challenges they face in the process, you can leverage that in offering a solution.
A competitive advantage is enough to develop a positioning and marketing strategy. The most important thing is to make your “reason to believe” component of the positioning formula as solid as possible: with numbers, statistics, and customer testimonials. Facts speak louder than descriptive adjectives.
To complete the positioning formula given above, you will need to fill in the blanks with specifics related to your brand. Two of the variables are easy to tackle: the name of your brand and its frame of reference, i.e. what products or services you are offering. The other three: target market, point of difference, and reason to believe, might need preliminary research.
Here is a questionnaire that will help you narrow down the appropriate audience segment of your product:
Another set of questions to answer:
And some broad ones for your potential customers (via interviews, surveys, and focus groups):
Try to imagine the whole customer journey, from first encountering a product or getting an idea of it, to the process of making a choice, all the way through completing the order.
To figure out the “reason to believe” variable, think of the following:
Now you should be ready to fill in the template and create your own positioning formula:
Among [target market], [x] is the brand of [frame of reference] that [point of difference] because [reason to believe].
Emails are the place where the copy, design, color choice, image content, and every little detail, to the last dot, reflect the chosen positioning approach. The same can be said for product-related marketing campaigns.
A great example of competitive-based product positioning with a strong reason to believe basis. Newsletter subscribers get to make their own decision on which product is healthier based on the chart. The Better Bagel refers to the calorie count and contents of their bagels, and the comparison is further supported by the very name of the brand.
This brand targets customers who want to feel healthy every day. It is reflected in the tagline and in the design of the campaign with vibrant colors and vigorous models. GoodAll values a healthy lifestyle, which is a company differentiator that attracts people of similar views to every product they offer.
Product positioning is a powerful instrument that can help you develop the right marketing strategy for getting noticed. The research and effort you put in to create it allows you to save time, money, and resources on theories that are bound to fail. To put together a product positioning statement, keep the following steps in mind:
As you can see, a short phrase needs a lot of effort, but your work won’t be in vain.
