Brand positioning. What is it and why does it matter?

If someone asked you why a customer should choose your business, your product or your service over your competitors, what would you say?

If your honest answer goes something like “well, we’ve been doing it for 20 years” or “we really care about our customers” or “we offer top quality at a great price”, you’re not alone. The chances are high that most of your competitors would probably say something similar. And when you’re saying the same stuff as your competitors that’s a bit of a problem.

Brand positioning is the answer to that question, or that problem. But a lot of businesses haven’t necessarily defined what theirs is.

So what is brand positioning?

Brand positioning is the strategic place your brand occupies in the market, and more importantly, in the minds of your customers and target customers, in relation to your competitors.

It’s what you want to be known for, the space in the market you’ve staked out as yours, and it sets the tone for everything that follows, helping influence whether a buyer puts you on their shortlist or not.

When it’s done well, it answers one fundamental question clearly: “Why you, and not them?”

April Dunford, a positioning consultant who’s spent a lot of time on the subject describes it well: positioning defines the context in which a customer understands your value. Without that context, even the best product or service is harder to choose than it should be.

We need to be careful not to confuse brand positioning with something else though. It’s not a tagline. It’s not a mission statement. And it’s definitely not a list of services. It’s a deliberate, considered decision about the space you’re going to own, and the commitment to show up in a way that’s consistent with that, across everything you do.

What happens without it?

When positioning isn’t clear, there’s a tendency for a few things to happen, and none of them are good for your business to be honest.

There are no clearly defined guide rails for your messaging, no golden thread that holds everything together. And so it becomes generic, safe, and lacking a coherent point of difference. You start to sound like everyone else in your category, making the same broad claims about quality, service and experience. Buyers can’t really tell you apart, so they do one of the two things buyers always do when they can’t tell things apart: fear change and stick with what they know. Or compare on price.

You aren’t giving people a reason to choose you, you see. People think ‘why switch?’, ‘I don’t know what I’m getting that’s any different or better’, and ‘I can’t see the value’.

It all means sales conversations take longer than they should. There’s more friction in the buying process. Referrals don’t come as naturally, because people struggle to explain what makes you different. And growth gets harder than it ought to be, even when the product or service you’re delivering could genuinely be excellent (you might want to see Growth Doesn’t Come from Being Good. It Comes from Being Chosen).

What good brand positioning looks like.

If your business is strong, yet your positioning just isn’t doing its job, fixing it doesn’t need to be complex. The best positioning is usually disarmingly simple. It’s about being clear on:

• who you’re for (and who you’re not)
• what you want to own in your category
• what you do that’s genuinely different, or better, or more relevant to the people you serve

It gives your business clarity on where you stand. It gives your marketing a spine and those guard rails I mentioned. And it gives your team something consistent to base all their communications on.

Over time, it builds the kind of familiarity and trust that makes being chosen feel natural rather than a slightly risky or hard-fought decision that needs justifying.

Research from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute backs this up. Their work on mental availability shows that the brands which come to mind first in a buying moment are the ones that have shown up consistently and distinctively over time. And before you can even begin to do that, you need to know clearly what position you’re trying to own.

Fancy a bit of pricing power?

I’m sure you’d be happy if you could maintain or increase your pricing without it negatively impacting your customer base wouldn’t you? Well, strong positioning also does something else that it doesn’t tend to get credit for. It gives you pricing power.

When buyers recognise you, and clearly understand the benefit you deliver, they see you as the obvious, right choice. When that happens, they stop haggling over price. Because price has given way to value. You’ve moved from being a commodity to a distinct product or service endowed with meaning and trust.

That’s not just ‘gut feel’. Research consistently shows that businesses with strong, distinctive brands are able to command a price premium over their less differentiated competitors. Take this piece from Les Binet & Peter Field showing that strong brand building reduces price elasticity – customers become less sensitive to price the more clearly they understand and value what a brand stands for. In other words, the clearer your positioning, the greater your pricing power.

Where to start.

If you’re not sure what your positioning is, or you suspect it’s a bit vague, the place to start isn’t your marketing. It’s the thinking that comes before it, around it, underneath it.

It doesn’t need to be complex, so don’t add too many layers. Map the market to get clear on who your customers are and who your competitors are. Identify what you do that makes you different. And look at your existing customers – get clear on who your best ones are, what they care about most, and why they chose you over everyone else. There’s often something there you’ve been underselling or not saying clearly enough.

That research will reveal the space or gap in the market where you position yourself. And once you can articulate it, everything else – your messaging, your website, your advertising, your marketing materials, your sales conversations – gets sharper and more focused.

When you know where you’re competing, who you’re competing against, who you’re competing for, and what you’re competing with that helps you win, everything becomes clearer. And easier.

But if you’re not sure where to start, that’s exactly the kind of conversation I have with SMEs at Foundry12. I’ll help you find your direction, sharpen your positioning and hone your messaging. To drive your growth.

So feel free to get in touch and let’s have a chat.

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Differentiate your brand to drive growth and avoid competing on price