Every Marketing project begins with Positioning
… or at least it should.

Positioning is the way consumers think about your brand. It resides in their brains, where they store data, emotions and perceptions related to your brand. It’s not something you own; the consumer owns it. But if you understand your customer’s emotions and perceptions about your brand, you can use that knowledge to your advantage and may be able to influence future perceptions and purchasing decisions. From a marketing strategy standpoint, we describe our desired or intended positioning in a document called a Positioning Statement.

The two essential parts of the Positioning Statement are:

• The positioning promise—the unique and compelling benefit you promise consumers
• The reason why someone should believe that you/your company can deliver on that promise

Although this sounds pretty simple and straightforward, it’s actually a very complex process if you do it right. A good positioning statement meets 7 specific criteria and may involve as many as three layers of consumer or end-user benefit. (This applies to both consumer brands and B2B situations.)

Creating a positioning statement that will serve as the foundation for your marketing plan – perhaps even your business – is a serious undertaking, with ramifications for every aspect of your enterprise. Fortunately, the process of creating a positioning platform gets easier when you’ve done it many times … and therein is the rub.

Positioning is in your brand’s DNA

Positioning isn’t something you do every year or every decade. It’s something you do once when a brand is born. It’s in the DNA of the brand. This means that most marketers will only position one or two brands in a career, if that. And if the process for such an important undertaking has a long learning curve, most marketers – even very talented ones – won’t ever become positioning masters.

The smart marketers recognize this and call in a specialist when positioning issues arise. The value of positioning experience far outweighs the cost.

Want to discuss YOUR positioning needs? Does your brand need some tweaking? Drop us an email message and we’ll do our best to meet your challenge. We’ve been doing this for decades.