Some companies are so good that they understand the branding game. On the other hand, others who do not have a mastery of the game hurt their prospects. So, they need to clear their mess and get back on track. How then does a business make the right driving turns to stay on track?
Dialling emergency codes for help, now and then can be bad. Then it will be better to learn how to prevent branding problems than cure them. Running a business can be a daunting task when those involved have no clue whatsoever on what to do.
This article is not meant to get you riled up. Rather, it is to show you how to get it right in the business sphere and connect right with your target audience. At a point, you would have come across a product that leaves you ajar. Why is that? Someone tells you that product has been in the market for a while but you’ve not heard anything about it before that time.
There must have been something wrong with their marketing efforts. Brands spring and enter the market continuously. When a brand makes a debut in the market, there is the tendency that the marketing efforts of big brands will push it to a corner where it will remain unseen and unheard.
Therefore, new brands or even existing ones, need to learn to position themselves strategically where target customers can have easy and memorable access. Imagine a sanitary towel brand targeting women in their menopause. That will be flogging a dead horse. To avoid this, a brand needs a highly converting brand positioning.
What is Brand Positioning?
Brand positioning is the process of designing a company’s offering and image to occupy a distinctive place in the mind of the target market. Brand positioning is the reason a customer will choose to purchase a similar product from one brand and not the other.
Brand positioning makes a brand an authority while others watch and learn in the competitive market. In the same vein, it shapes a customer’s view of a brand’s products or services. It is the reason a buyer will choose to leave their money in their wallets rather than buy a competitor’s product. This contributes to a customer’s loyalty and consumer’s brand equity.
In the beverage industry, Coca Cola has maintained its brand positioning so well that, it beats its competitors, such as Bigi Cola, Big Cola, and so on. For instance, Bigi Cola beats Big-Cola hands down in the beverage production race.
Coca Cola & Bigi Cola
The reason is not far-fetched. Bigi-Cola produces different flavours of their soft drinks. This gives people a myriad of options to choose from.
Bigi Cola & Big Cola
Also, Darling Hair and Lush Hair designed various hair extensions in different colours. They also created different styles of wigs and accessories. With these product variations, women of different skin shades have a variety of colours and styles to choose from. These two brands now make readily sorted hair extensions. This saves hairdressers time and stress. Not that alone, users do not have to worry about sorting their hair extensions themselves. This positioning pushed Xpression, a competitor, to a corner, due to their limited colour and style offerings.
In the bid for a brand to position itself right, it should design a good positioning statement. It shows who it serves, what it offers, how it offers it, how it beats the competitor’s products. In short, a positioning statement captures a brand’s offering, purpose, and expresses what a buyer’s experience will entail while interacting with the brand.
Dominating the Industry through Brand Positioning
Brands that we have today did not get to the skyline in the absence of competitors. McDonald’s had Burger King to compete with, Lady Care with Always, 7 UP with Mountain Dew, and so on. Most of these competitors not only record low patronage, a shift in brand loyalty, and so on. They exited the market.
Alike, not only brands with similar products compete. Who would imagine that a tampon industry would fight tooth and nail with sanitary towel-making companies to get women to patronize them?
However, there is always a way for you in the market. To reserve your space in your target audience’s minds and scale in your industry, you have to take action. Here is a list of steps to take:
- Identify your Target Audience
When creating products or services, be specific about your target consumers. It’s great to make a milkshake, but do you know who you want to sell it to?
Target Audience
Your audience should not be generic. Imagine wanting to sell to – women, office workers, immigrants, etc. The beneficial thing to do is to narrow down your audience to a group of people. Take your time to identify the ‘who’ of your products/services.
For instance, Black Opal Beauty, a cosmetics company, does not focus on all women. Rather, they made women of colour their positioning. This means their products such as; powder, lipstick, primer, eyeliner, and so on, are not available for white women. It would not even soothe their skin tone.
With this narrow audience, black women know exactly where to get cosmetics without being judged for their skin colour. To add to this, they are likely not to suffer a wrong recommendation of products.
- Market Research
As a brand with a product or service, you must identify your customers’ preferences. Market Research also entails finding out how the audience would react to a new product.
Companies must also investigate the market they wish to enter. The prohibition of pork in Saudi Arabia might be common knowledge. On the other hand, the import of used clothes might not be. Hence, to avoid waste, companies who want to spread their tentacles into other countries, must conduct thorough market research.
It is not enough to create products; the interests of the customers must be considered. Most people who buy Ankara will prefer to use key soaps to wash their clothes. This is because detergents are often considered to fade them. Therefore, Ariel came up with a product, ‘Ariel Ankara’ tilted towards Ankara owners. They will not only remove dirt but retain the Ankara colours.
Through market research, a brand will get both qualitative and quantitative data relevant to its growth. This could be done through surveys, focus group discussions, and interviews.
- Conduct Competitor Research
As established earlier, a brand has many competitors who sell the same product or offer the same service. Therefore, a brand must observe what its competitor’s brand positioning is. This will serve as a source of inspiration. Let us take a look at Coca Cola and Bigi Cola for example.
When Coca Cola began to sell its product for ₦150, Bigi Cola retained its price at ₦100. Later, Coca Cola had to create a smaller bottle for ₦100. Thereby competing directly with each other.
Similarly, Indomie Noodles created variations of their products, unlike other brands who maintained just one size. Indomie Noodles has indomitables (smallest size), super pack, belle full, and the hungry man’s size. Consumers easily bought whichever size their tummies requested.
Indomie Noodles
There is no crime in finding out what new products your competitors are rolling out. Neither is it bad to imitate their strategies if it’ll work for you. Just ensure you make those strategies yours in the process. Also, find out their strengths and weaknesses. That’s where you come in.
In your research, do not leave out the step where you find out which marketing strategies they use.
- Identify your Brand’s Unique Selling Proposition
What makes your brand stand out in the crowd? What makes your brand voice so distinct that it cannot be mistaken for another? What offer does your brand have that is unique in itself when compared to others?
That’s your unique selling proposition (USP). A USP is the one thing that separates your grains from the shaft of other businesses.
To do better at creating an effective USP, ensure to keep an eye on your competitors. Their weaknesses can be a good place to start. You might decide to include vegan recipes in your menu. This will attract the vegans to patronize you as you cater for their needs.
- Craft a positioning statement
A brand positioning statement guides your company on what to do, who to target, and what makes you different in the market. It is used internally, that is, within a company to guide branding and communication actions.
With it, your brand will focus on its key message to the audience. Let’s take Volvo Cars for example. It sell cars just like other brands but it makes safety the key message they pass across in their branding communications.
Brand Positioning Strategies
For a brand to differentiate itself from others in the competitive market, they have to understand the wide range of strategies to choose from. This depends on the industry a brand is in, and its products or services.
- Benefit-oriented Positioning
While trying to sell to customers, brands must focus more on the benefits their products/services offer rather than the features. When brands come from the features angle, they focus only on themselves. Rather, when they target their audience from the benefit angle, it shows that they focus on the wellbeing of their audience.
For instance, a bank might have just launched a self-card printing service in all of their bank branches. From the features angle, they will say, “enter any of our branches and print your ATM Card in less than 2 minutes.” From the benefit angle, it could be, “get your ATM Card in any of our branches even on weekends and make limitless transactions.”
When companies include this in their marketing communications, the audience feels at home with them. This also evokes a warm emotion that makes them connect with the brand faster.
- Solution-oriented Positioning
Through this brand positioning, a brand seeks to find answers to questions in the minds of the customers.
Problem-Solution
Not only that, it fixes every problem the customers face. At a time, Glo, a network service provider in Nigeria began to produce 4G SIM cards. This gave their customers a solution to the network problems they faced (to a point).
- Influence-oriented Positioning
This is similar to influencer marketing. This brand positioning gives prospects and existing customers a faster way to trust a brand. These celebrities have built their tribes and followership on social media. Therefore, when they identify with a brand, their followers also choose to follow these brands. These celebrities are often referred to as brand ambassadors. In 2019, Dettol signed Funke Akindele-Bello as its brand ambassador.
Odion Ighalo
Likewise, Dettol signed the popular Footballer Odion Ighalo as a brand ambassador. Through him, other Footballers will develop more readiness to live a healthy, and germ-free life.
- Ease-oriented Strategy
Everyone interacts with products and services to make their life better and bring more convenience. As you sell, point out ways by which you would make life enjoyable for your audience.
The ease of use could be the free coupling of machines before delivery, free delivery, availability on multiple platforms, or a prompt chat response.
Most banks today are available on various platforms. A customer can make a wide range of bank transactions through USSD codes, mobile apps, through the Automated Teller Machine (ATM), or in the banking hall. A customer has a lot of options to choose from depending on their situation per time.
- Quality-oriented Strategy
No two products or services are of the same quality. No matter how sophisticated various products are, one would stand out more than the other. To position your brand well, you can use top-notch quality materials for your products. This helps you position yourself to the audience that your products have a long life span.
Take Nike for example, their shoes are made from plastic. It has a soft Ethylene Vinyl Acetate foam inside. Not all regular shoe brands can provide that.
- Price-oriented strategy
Ridiculously low prices can result in setbacks, low profit, and so on, in business. Moreover, your brand can find a way to reduce its price to entice customers.
As you reduce your prices, make sure they are not so low that prospects begin to doubt the durability of your products.
Examples of Brands with great brand Positioning
There are numerous brands that get the brand positioning game right. They are considered the bosses of brands.
- Apple Music – Spotify
These platforms offer audio streaming services. However, they are positioned differently from each other. Apple Music offers free content to its users. To add to this, they also offer on-screen lyrics to those who stream.
On the other hand, Spotify personalizes its content while they also use a price-oriented positioning strategy. For Spotify users, only the lyrics of a few songs are displayed.
- Close Up – Oral-B
Close Up Deep Action/Oral-B Pro-Health
These two toothpaste companies currently occupy the Nigerian Market. Both produce various types of toothpaste – deep action, herbal, etc. However, to position itself better, Close Up has a 30g sachet of their toothpaste while Oral-B sticks to only the small and big sizes.
- Zoom – Google Meet
It’s no longer news how Zoom came to the rescue of most people during the pandemic. It was the reason people were able to gather, interact, and socialize on a whole new level. It gathered people on the web and that prevented the rate at which people contracted the disease.
Zoom-Google Meet
Zoom became the tool for isolated professionals. Contrary, Google Meet positioned itself as a tool for families and friends to connect and spark old flames.
Brand Positioning Map
In your interactions with your prospects, you certainly want to read their minds. You want to know what they think about your products/services. Brand mapping is the plotting of various axes. Each axis represents an attribute that drives brand selection.
In other words, a brand map shows how your product is received by consumers. It also shows how they perceive your competitors’ products/services. Simply put, it evaluates your brand.
Map 1 from AMA Boston
This map shows that Domino Sugar is considered as being more tasty and more natural. Truvia is considered more natural but less tasty. Equal is less tasty and less natural.
While you draw your brand positioning map, create various versions based on various attributes. These sugar substitute companies created different maps to see which is considered the tastiest, the healthiest, and the coolest.
Map 2
Map 2 shows that among the 4 brands on the map, Truvia is discovered to be more healthy and more natural. Domino Sugar is more natural and less healthy. Equal is more healthy but less natural.
Map 3
Here on map 3, Sweet Spot and Truvia are more cool while Equal and Domino Sugar are less cool.
Brand mapping helps you get a clear vision of where your brand should head next. It provides insights on steps to take on retaining your spot in your audience’s minds or securing a new spot. This might require you to improve your products.
To become an authority, you have to position your products and services right. Positioning brings your brand’s various products to the front door of your prospects. In addition, it always places your products and services in the minds of buyers. To position your brand successfully, research the best positioning strategy that will work for you.
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