Your market positioning strategy is a key piece when it comes to brand development. It helps guide content marketing plans, influencer marketing tactics, pricing and distribution models, and can even have an impact on decisions made outside of the marketing department.
But the concept of marketing positioning can be a little ambiguous. So in this post, we’ll delve into all you need to know about marketing and product positioning.
Table of Contents
What is Market Positioning?
How to Kick Start Your Market Positioning Strategy
Examples of Marketing Positioning Signals
3 Ways to Measure Market Positioning
What is Market Positioning?
Branding and digital marketing expert, Phil Kotler (also known as the "father of modern marketing”), defines market positioning as “the act of designing the company’s offering and image to occupy a distinctive place in the mind of the target market”.
In general, strategic positioning is used to influence the perception of a company or product in relation to others in the market. The idea is to create an image and brand identity that audiences recognize and relate to in a positive way.
See also: what is brand recognition, and the secrets behind excellent product branding
Perception is complicated. It varies from person to person and it’s fragile — it can take years to craft and seconds to shatter.
So, if it’s so temperamental, why do professionals invest millions into strategic market positioning? Well, there are a number of advantages that outweigh the risks, including:
- Better brand awareness
- Differentiation from competitors
- Charging premium pricing
- Increased recall
- Improved market and customer-centricity
- Easier to bounce back from crises
- Increased brand equity
With advantages like these, it’s clear why so many teams strive to have a well-laid out brand positioning strategy. Read on for how you too can reap these kinds of rewards.
How to Kick Start Your Market Positioning Strategy
To get started on a market positioning strategy, you need to asses the market as a whole, learn and track how your competitors are doing, and understand your goals. Here are some simple steps you should follow:
Conduct a competitive analysis
In order to create a unique positioning in marketing, you first need to understand how you compare to other companies in your space. This can be achieved through performing a competitive analysis using competitive intelligence.
Questions to ask:
- Who are your main competitors?
- How much influence do they have on each other?
- What key themes are associated with each competitor?
- Are certain competitors thought of more favorably?
- What do consumers like and dislike about them?
- Where are they performing the strongest?
- Where are they falling flat?
- How is the industry landscape performing as a whole?
- Where do the opportunities lie?
- Any threats or disrupters to keep an eye on?
- How does your organization compare and contrast amongst others in your category?
Once you have the answers to the above questions, your competitive positioning will become clearer.
Additional resources: How to Perform a Competitive Analysis, Competitor Benchmarking: What It Is and Why It Is Important
Plot a market map
Next, using the insights gathered from your competitive analysis, create a map of the market that shows your competitive positioning. A perceptual map, sometimes referred to as a position map or market map, is a visual representation of how competitors are positioned in relation to your organization.
Through market mapping, you can better understand the thoughts and behaviors of consumers, spot industry trends, and identify gaps in your category, helping you craft a unique and differentiated identity.
Market maps takes the form of a matrix, representing two or more attributes that are rated on a scale. It's typically to compare a qualitative vs. qualitative attribute such as the following:
- Quality vs. price
- Functionality vs. price
- Performance vs. price
- Safety & reliability vs. price
Here are some examples to help you get started creating your your own map:
Never made this type of map before? We can recommend checking out GroupMap’s free tool and reviewing this article offering tips on plotting and reading market maps.
Write a positioning statement
By now you should have a good idea of how you want to be perceived. The next step is to formalize these ideas into a written statement.
As explained by Hubspot, a positioning statement is a brief description of a product or service, the target market, and how the product or service fills a particular need of the target market.
It's an internal tool designed to focus and align efforts with your brand, mission statement, and value proposition.
Positioning statement examples:
G2: G2 provides a B2B review site for business professionals who are looking to quickly discover, buy, and manage the best technology for their needs. Unlike other B2B review sites, G2 offers 700K+ unbiased and verified user reviews in over 1400 categories.
HubSpot: Since 2006, HubSpot has been on a mission to make the world more inbound. Today, over 68,800 total customers in more than 100 countries use HubSpot’s award-winning software, services, and support to transform the way they attract, engage, and delight customers. Comprised of Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Service Hub, and a powerful free CRM, HubSpot gives companies the tools they need to Grow Better.
Tips for writing a positioning statement:
- Keep it short and sweet
- Make it unique
- Stay aligned with your core values
- Include your promise
- Explain why your company is different
Follow the below positioning statement example formula as a rule of thumb:
For [your customer], [your company] is the [your market] that best delivers on [your promise] because [your company] is [your evidence].
Examples of Market Positioning Signals
Now you that you understand your positioning and have summarized it into a statement, it’s time to think about what marketing positioning strategies you’ll use.
Companies that generate strong, positive, connections in consumers minds didn’t happen by chance. A team of marketing experts carefully crafted that perception through a number of signals (or strategic positioning strategies).
Let’s explore some of those signals in more detail:
Price
More often than not, price is a key factor in a customers decision-making process. Because of this, marketing teams use their pricing strategy to portray a distinct image and, hopefully, influence how prospective customers perceive the value being presented.
Pricing strategy can revolve around keeping prices as low as possible, or it can be more complex. Offering "premium" prices, or pricing higher than the competition can trigger a sense in consumers mind that the higher priced items are better quality, or more worth the cost.
Perceived quality
Price and perceived quality often go hand in hand, which is why they’re frequently used attributes for perception maps. According to David Aaker, consultant and professor, perceived quality has three prongs:
1. Objective quality: based on the performance of a product
2. Manufacturing quality: based on how well made a product is (or isn't)
3. Product-based quality: associated with features, parts, ingredients, or services
Say you have two TVs, one is a 4K plasma Smart TV with after sales care, and the other is a standard model with no bells and whistles.
You may think that the entry-level TV would naturally be perceived as being lower quality as it has fewer features. But strategic marketing positioning requires you to understand what "quality" means to different customer segments.
If certain audiences prefer to look at the manufacturing specs materials used and the entry-level TV comes out top, consumers will deem that to be of better quality regardless of the product attributes of the plasma TV. Moreover, the plasma TV may be produced by a company that has a history with product recalls, in which case, consumers are likely to think that entry-level TV is still better quality.
So to summarize, it's important to achieve perceived quality on a level that consumers consider important. Want to learn more about better understanding your target audience and their decision making process? Check out our Meltwater Audience and Consumer Insights tool or take a look at the best consumer insights tools in comparison!
Corporate endorsements
Another positioning signal often leveraged by marketing and branding teams is corporate endorsements.
While McDonald's is known as being a fast-food company, they worked to dispel their unhealthy image through their London 2012 Olympic sponsorship.
Despite the sponsorship confusing people at first, it gave McDonald's the publicity and platform they wanted to raise awareness around obesity. In line with their sponsorship, they unveiled a large-scale promotional push which took place throughout the duration of The Games and included activity toys with Happy Meals and vouchers for sport sessions.
As a top-tier International Olympic Committee sponsor, McDonald's was also the only branded food in the Olympic Park and the Athlete's Village. The messaging strategy? If a Big Mac is good enough for the world’s top athlete’s, it's good enough for you (in moderation… of course)!
Influencer marketing
Influencer marketing can also significantly help company positioning efforts. Due to consumers often finding influencers more credible than owned brand content, it’s a great strategy to use for those wanting to amplify positive brand perceived amongst their target audience.
With that being said, choosing the right influencers to endorse your brand is critical. Make the wrong decision and your business can end up being positioned in a totally different direction than what you set out to achieve.
Thankfully you don’t have to rely on your intuition alone when choosing influencers. Using an influencer management solution, you can filter by specific attributes and topics to find the perfect influencer partners.
Tip: These are the best social influencer management platforms and social influencer marketing platforms.
Thought leadership
Lots of companies choose to include thought leadership in their content marketing strategy and frame their executives as experts on certain topics. Thought leadership is useful for all organizations, but it’s especially helpful for those wanting to break into a new category, as it can make your leadership seem more credible and trustworthy.
A great example is Lush cosmetics. To strengthen their positioning as a company focused on cruelty-free products, Lush stays closely involved in lobbying for animal rights. They even have their own award, The Lush Prize, which is the largest prize fund in the non-animal testing sector, awarding £250,000 to support initiatives that work to end or replace animal testing.
Distribution
Your distribution strategy can say a lot about you, and is a big factor in market positioning. For example, if you're a luxury brand, you may want to opt against selling your goods in convenience stores, given that the products sold in convenience stores tend to be lower in price in order to match the consumers browsing mindset and expectation.
That said, while it’s unlikely that customers will stop in to get a pint of milk or loaf of bread and walk out with a £1,000 handbag — but if it’s lower-priced, you might just trigger that impulse buy! It all depends on the goals and capacity of your distribution strategy.
It's important to note that when selling goods through retailers, brands have less control over promotional efforts. This is why it’s rare to see extremely exclusive brands in department stores — yes, even the fancy ones! Such companies prefer owning their owns stores, and in most cases, rarely offer promotions — a strategic tactic that helps strengthen their exclusive market positioning!
3 Ways to Measure Market Positioning
There’s no use putting all this effort into strategic positioning if you’re not going to measure whether or not your choices have been successful in moving the needle. As mentioned earlier, perception is complicated — but that doesn’t mean it can’t be analyzed.
Below you’ll find 3 strategies you can use to understand if you’ve influenced how your target audience perceives you.
Media monitoring
Use media intelligence and social listening insights to see how your thought-leadership content is resonating, and follow product mentions to assess if your pricing and distribution choices are making sense.
You can do this by measuring how many times your organization is mentioned alongside relevant industry conversations and keywords. You can even get a sense for how prominent your company is within the conversation, compared to your competitors.
Audience analysis
Use a consumer analysis tool to see if there's a strong correlation between communities who follow you on social media, or if there’s a disconnect. If there's a disconnect, it doesn't have to be a bad thing! It may simply shine a light on a new marketing opportunity for your products.
This can be achieved by looking at dimensions such as audience affinity, how your target audience describes themselves in their bios, other types of companies they follow, and so on. This is especially useful if you want to measure whether you’ve successfully connected with the type of target audience you’re marketing to.
Hold a focus group
Brand salience is the degree to which your company is thought of or noticed by consumers when they make a purchase decision. Focus groups are a great way of qualitatively measuring brand salience.
Now you should have a better understanding of what market positioning means and how to get started on a market positioning strategy. To see how Meltwater can help with your strategic positioning, fill out the form below!
