The Value of Position
Before I started writing this article, I did a few Google searches to come up with the number of marketing messages we see every day. There are quite a few differing opinions but the magic number seems to be around 3,000.
The clamor of marketing and advertising messages eventually turns into white noise and is filtered out by our brains. We flip past the first ten pages of most magazines, Tivo our way through commercials and mostly ignore offers for free stuff in the margins of Facebook.
A strong brand position helps to increase awareness by piercing through competitors offerings and imprinting your brand firmly into the hearts and minds of potential customers.
Whether you realize it or not, your company is constantly creating a brand experience for customers. When they interact with you, whether it be with your products and services or with your employees, they form ideas about your brand. You need to craft this brand experience in a calculated and beneficial manner. You need to take steps to control every aspect of the messaging and interactions.
You can do this with your brand positioning.
The fourth law in Jack Trout and Al Ries’ 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing is that “Marketing is not a battle of products, it’s a battle of perceptions.” In other words, it’s not how well a product or service works that determines if consumers will buy or use it, but instead, it’s brand awareness and positioning that influences their decisions.
Developing this position is commonly referred to in business vernacular as a ‘Differentiation Strategy.’ By developing a unique product or service and positioning it as such, companies begin to eliminate competition.
Putting it simply—differentiate or die.
The goal is to be as different as possible while remaining as relevant as possible. Jonathan Ive, the guy who designed the iPod I listen to and the MacBook Pro I’m typing on, takes it a step further.
Ive says, “So many companies are competing against each other with similar agendas. Being superficially different is the goal of so many of the products we see. A preoccupation with differentiation is the concern of many corporations rather than trying to innovate and genuinely taking the time, investing the resources and caring enough to try and make something better.”
It’s essential that you start off by developing a brand position for your product or service—one that truly sets you apart from the crowd. Once you’ve accomplished that, use it as a measurement for all you do, making sure that everything from your marketing to product development falls neatly in line with that position.
