Whether you’re launching a new brand or reintroducing a product to the market. You need to apply a brand positioning strategy that will appeal to your current and potential buyers. Your strategy will assist in turning them into repeat buyers.
Brand positioning is aimed at creating a lasting effect in the minds of your customers. Its end goal is to create an impression so unique that the individual involved will form an attachment to your brand.
Note: Brand positioning is not always intentional. Especially if the consumer was already on a hunt for a specific product or service to become loyal to.
There are several ways that a product or brand can create a lasting impression. It often begins with quality, packaging, customer service, price or other similar factors. However, to intentionally promote a lasting impression, type of effect on a customer will require a lot of creative work. Businesses today need a solid plan for customizing their strategy to fit their brand’s needs.
Read on as we share some brand positioning strategies to ensure customer loyalty.
9 Types of Brand Positioning Strategies
The brand positioning strategy of your choice depends heavily on who your target customers are. And the strategy you choose to work with should be one that resonates with the people who are interested in what your brand offers.
It’s important to remember, that people are impressionable, but only with things that interest them.
Is it possible to use more than one positioning strategy for your brand? Absolutely. However to be successful, not all brand positioning strategies can or should be simultaneously applied to your brand’s architecture marketing plan.
Note: It’s important to keep your messaging clear and concise for greater impact.
1. Service quality positioning
This strategy is more common with service providing businesses. The quality of your service and attitude of representatives in your front office who deal directly with customers, can ‘say’ a lot about your company.
With this positioning strategy, the service offered should be so flawless that your customers can’t help but notice. Good service is a major deciding factor for customers on whether they will be back the next time they need that type of product you offer.
2. Industry positioning
This strategy can be applied by industry experts or companies that offer professional services in a specific industry. Using industry positioning will solidify your authority as an expert in your industry.
Clients will more easily become loyal to your services because they have already established trust in your experience in the industry.
3. Value positioning
This positioning strategy can be applied using the perceived value and quality of the goods and services being offered. With value positioning, your brand should be represented as a provider of high-end/luxury products and services that are not necessarily for all members of the public. There should be a clear representation of exclusivity for clients.
4. Niche-focused positioning
Niche-focused positioning is applied when your brand provides a service that is not popular or in high demand. This strategy should help to promote you and your brand as providing specialized services in your target niche.
The importance of this positioning strategy is to create awareness among the people who need those products and services. As long as the market for those specific goods and services do not become saturated, niche-focused positioning works successfully for brands in small niches.
5. Celebrity or influencer positioning
The endorsement or rejection of a company’s offers by a celebrity can greatly impact how successful sales may be over a following period of time. Thus, the influencer marketing strategy utilizes the significant power of celebrities and influencers in the decision-making process of the current and target potential customers.
Apart from endorsements, celebrities have a wide reach (on and off-line) and can get your products and services in front of millions of people within your target customer pool.
This strategy, albeit effective, is often applied when the company has a sizable budget for brand positioning, or they’ve already built a relationship with a person of influence.
6. Competitor-based positioning
This positioning strategy is very direct. It is applied by making comparisons between what the brand offers, and what the competition is offering. The aim of this strategy is to establish the brand as the best provider of that product or service.
This strategy clearly works to prove superiority and show that consumers will get a better offer if they switch over to their side. In this case, the comparison is not completely direct in relation to the competition, but enough to establish a difference in favor of the brand applying the strategy.
7. Product quality-based positioning
Regardless of how creative your marketing strategies are, if your product quality is low, repeat purchases will forever stay low.
Product quality-based positioning isn’t a stand-alone strategy. It’s often used alongside one or more other positioning strategies for greater impact.
Good quality in itself is enough to make a brand stand out, and create an impression on the mind of the consumer. This strategy is used to ensure that the product quality is being represented well and that the quality is promised is the same being delivered.
8. Cost-driven positioning
This positioning strategy helps to explore how much quality can be provided at a rate lower than what the competitions offer. It is aimed at consumers who need a cheaper alternative that they can still derive maximum satisfaction from.
Usually, the only way to realistically achieve this is when you have access to methods and technology that are still out of reach of your competitors. It is imperative that even when you are applying this strategy, you limit its impact on your product quality as much as possible.
9. Role-based positioning
This positioning strategy focuses on providing services to people at a certain level in certain industries. It is based on you emphasizing your experience and qualifications, and how your services will benefit a specific role or group, or industry. Mentioning the results you’ve generated, for similar people and businesses you’ve worked with in the past, is beneficial too.
Tips for Applying your Brand Positioning Strategy
- Outline the aim of your brand and use it as the building block for the strategy you choose to apply.
– When you start this way, you can easily determine when your strategy fits or not. - Research your target customers, and understand their interests.
– Do you know what are they specifically look for when purchasing a new product? - Decide on the brand positioning strategy you intend to work with, and then start expanding on it.
– Remember to use the buyer research information you gathered, and fit it into your brand’s needs. - Implement and communicate your brand positioning strategy.
– Begin creating a good impression on your potential customers that will move them to the next kevel.
If you’ve used one or more of these strategies, share the changes that came along with its application?
The list above is not all-encompassing – if there other brand marketing and positioning strategies you’d like to share, leave us a comment below. We’re all about learning and sharing, to help businesses grow.
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