No matter how long you’ve been in business, chances are good that you are engaged in developing and promoting your brand positioning strategy. You’ll invest plenty of time in the process of evaluating your products or services in terms of market share, sales and customer base and comparing this information to that of your competitors. You’ll work to determine how your customers perceive your business and its major offerings and use the detailed findings to establish your business at the proper place within that all important target market.
Your business position within the target market will determine your business’s degree of success. If you think you can maneuver into a more profitable place, do so by adjusting your products or services to more closely match the desired position (known as re-positioning), or pursue strategies that change customer perception of the products and services offered by your competitors (de-positioning).
Here are some strategic tips that can help you to be as effective as possible during your brand positioning process:
1. Understand brand positioning as fully as you can, especially in the way that it directly affects your business. Businesses, especially smaller ones, are very diverse in their needs and offerings, and it might take quite a bit of effort to even be sure that you are positioning yourself within the correct market. Look closely at the businesses sharing your pool of regular customers, their purchasing patterns and the roles that your business plays in their everyday lives.
2. Develop the most efficient method possible for gathering customer information. Remember that you’re trying to get inside their heads and back out again with an unvarnished look at how they see your business in terms of the benefit that it provides for them. You might consider questionnaires, phone surveys or online surveys and offer a small bonus to compensate customers for their valuable time.
3. Determine which of your products and/or services are the most popular or powerful, so that you can use them to build on or adjust your overall positioning strategy.
4. Rank all of your products and/or services in terms of positive customer review and in relation to those of your competitors.
5. List the most popular group of attributes that describe your business and products from the viewpoints of your customers and combine them to reach your ideal vector…the position in your target market from where your business can operate at the highest possible level of strength.
6. Product-based businesses can complete the positioning process more easily than service based businesses. After all, your customers can see, touch and watch demonstrations of your products to see how they work and visualize their benefits. Here are some hints for exploring how customers perceive your business and its services:
• Create simulations, descriptions or case studies showing proven results.
• Find out how customers view your services in terms of value, results and convenience.
7. Regardless of your business type, take the information about customer perception that you’ve gathered, determine your top benefits and attributes and use them to determine your current positioning and how far that point is from your ideal vector in the marketplace.
8. Decide whether you are satisfied with the current positioning of your business, or whether you need to change your strategy. Consider your target market and decide if your business is positioned in such a manner that it maximizes every opportunity for visibility in that market.
Finally, keep in mind that positioning can be either an active or passive process. If you choose not to fully engage in it – it will still take place. Don’t give up the valuable opportunity to monitor and influence the process and increase profitability
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