You’ve come up with the perfect idea for a new small business and you’re getting all your ducks in a row. One of the most elusive of these ducks is a branding strategy.
Resist the urge to slap something together and move on to the next task because your branding makes a huge difference in the future success of your company. Studies show that a consistent brand strategy can increase a company’s revenue by as much as 23% a year!
Don’t worry, we’ve taken some of the guesswork out of your marketing strategizing and put together a quick guide to help you get started. Keep reading to learn everything you need to know about brand positioning to take your small business to the next level!
What Does Brand Positioning Mean?
Before you can figure out how to position your branding, it’s important to know what the term your brand means. Figuring out the positioning of your brand helps set your company apart from the competition.
It’s more than a catchy slogan or a memorable logo, your company’s position capitalizes on your unique features and cements an image of your company into consumers’ minds. Make sure the image you present is the one you want your customers to remember!
Examples of Common Strategies
This kind of branding isn’t new and over the years, a few “standard” brand positioning strategies emerged. Keep in mind that these strategies are great for jump-off points, but you’ll want to customize your positioning to focus on your company’s wow factor. Feel free to mix and match to find a good strategy for your company.
Creating Brand Value
One way to position your marketing is to create value by explaining all the ways the product or service would help the customer and that the financial cost doesn’t outweigh the benefits. Start by identifying a common problem for your target demographic, then show how your company can solve that problem.
Customer Rapport
Trying to appeal to your customers on a personal and emotional level helps them trust you more when you try to make a sale. For this kind of positioning strategy, spend a good deal of effort learning about the personal lives and needs of your customer base. That way, you’ll understand what they want and need and you can appeal to them as individuals.
Put Your Company in the Spotlight
Another great positioning strategy is to focus on all the things that make your company stand out from the competition. Doing this puts a spotlight on your company and sets you apart from the rest in the customer’s mind.
How to Develop Your Own Brand Strategy
Now that you have a solid springboard to launch your strategy planning from, it’s time to dive in and figure out your positioning strategy. These steps can help organize your strategy planning when it feels like you don’t know where to start.
Take Stock of Your Current Positioning
If you’ve already started selling your product or service to consumers, you might have a brand position in place. But, if the position isn’t working, you can always reposition your company! Its always best to know where you’re starting from and where you want to end up when devising any business strategy.
For those who haven’t hit the market yet or haven’t defined a brand position yet, skip this step and move on to the research phase.
Research the Competition
This part of the strategizing method entails looking up everything you can about your competition. What other companies compete with you? How do they position their company?
Doing thorough competition research makes it easier to identify features that make your company unique and more appealing to consumers. Make sure to use several sources to do your research so you can get the most accurate information possible.
Figure Out Your “It” Factor
Now, let’s turn our focus inward towards the company. What makes this company’s product or service special and memorable?
Figure out which features you want to promote the most and build your brand image and positioning based on those features. Try to think outside of the box when coming up with your “it factor”. When consumers see every coffee shop in town saying they have the world’s best cup of joe, the consumers know someone is lying!
Come up with a Brand Position
Once you’ve decided what you want to focus on in your branding, you can take all the information you’ve gathered so far and come up with a position statement. This statement should only have one or two sentences defining what makes you stand out from your competitors.
Some of the ideas you want to address in your statement include:
- Defining the target demographic
- The biggest benefit of your product or service
- Why you do that better than any other company
Try to use simple and easy to understand phrases so everyone knows what your company stands for!
Test That Position Statement to Make Sure It Works
What? You thought you could move on and forget about your branding? Think again!
After you come up with a position statement, you need to test it and make sure that the image you portray with that branding is what you intended to convey. Take polls of your customers and gather data about your sales so you can decide if the brand position needs adjusting.
Define Your Brand before the Market Decides for You
Remember that it’s ok to rebrand your company if the original plan doesn’t yield the results you want. But, give your current strategy a little time to work before going back to the drawing board.
It’s important to remember that the market and customers will define your brand for you if you don’t brand yourself first. If you don’t take control of your company’s branding, you could end up with a brand you don’t want.
We hope you enjoyed reading this article and that you learned a few things about brand positioning. If you’re looking for more fascinating articles about business, technology, travel, and more, check out the rest of our blogs today!
