If you are working on Brand Positioning for your brand, then you are in the right spot. A Brand Positioning Statement defines how your brand shows up in the market. Importantly, it should outline your ideal target consumer, the space you play in, your main message that differentiates your brand from others, and the support points. Too many brands are negligent in differentiating themselves from competitors and end up stuck in the clutter of the market. Our brand positioning process provides a logical approach to getting more emotional. We have cheat sheets to find the ideal functional and emotional benefits. To illustrate, you will find 20 different examples of brand positioning statements within this article.
Can you describe your brand in a way that motivates consumers to engage your brand and in a space that is own-able for your brand?
Essentially, we have brand positioning statement examples for a type of brand close to yours.
- Consumer packaged goods.
- Retail.
- Restaurants.
- Tourism.
- B2B.
- Cars.
- Beer and Alcohol.
- Healthcare and Pharma.
- Famous brands.
Drawing from My Experience with Brand Positioning
As a former VP of Marketing, I have seen the impact that a smart brand positioning work can have on a brand. Equally, I have also seen poor brand positioning work that is based on random guesses rather than a smart process. Brand Positioning impacts your brand communications, future product innovation, the purchase moment, and the customer experience.
While I spent 20 years in marketing and loved every day, my current role is to teach marketers the essential marketing skills that will help them in their marketing career.
You can purchase any brand positioning template that you see: Marketing Templates.
And, you can use our marketing training to make your marketing teams smarter: Marketing Training.
Brand Positioning
Where your brand can win
To find your ideal brand positioning statement, you want to find the most motivating space for consumers. And find the space that is most ownable for your brand. Our brand positioning statement process starts with a defined consumer target your brand will serve. Then, we focus on the emotional and functional benefits that differentiate your brand. Further, we use support points to help differentiate your brand from competitors.
Brand positioning is the conceptual space a brand owns in the consumer’s mind. It’s what they think of you. Importantly, as you dig in on creating your brand positioning statement, look for the space to play, and then the ideal space can differentiate your brand to win in the market.
I introduce a Venn diagram, with three circles:
To illustrate, click on our Brand Positioning process to help differentiate from competitors.
It’s all about how to differentiate.
To start, the first circle comprises everything your consumer wants or needs. Next, the second circle includes everything your brand does best. Finally, the third circle lists what your competitor does best.
Your brand’s winning zone (in green) is the space that matches up “what consumers want” with “what your brand does best.” Most importantly, you can own and defend this space from attack. Essentially, you can satisfy the consumer’s needs better than any competitor.
Your brand will not survive in the losing zone. (in red) This space matches the consumer needs with “what your competitor does best.” Consequently, you will fail to differentiate, and your competitor will beat you every time.
What happens when there is a tie?
As markets mature, competitors copy each other. It gets harder to be better with a definitive product win. Many brands play in this risky zone (in grey). If you and your competitor meet the consumer’s needs in a relative tie, you can win the tie with emotions and innovation.
You will fail if you only focus on using product features to differentiate your brand. As the market matures, competitors copy each other. And that winning green space gets very small. Instead, you can carve out a winning brand positioning space by focusing on the emotional benefits. In this article, I will show you our logical way to engage with our Emotional Cheat Sheet, which has 40 emotional benefits to play with.
Avoid the dumb zone
Sadly, I always have to mention the dumb zone. (in blue) Here, two competitors “battle it out” in a space where consumers do not care. One competitor says, “We are faster,” and the other brand says, “We are just as fast.” However, no one bothered to ask the consumer if they cared about speed. Both brands end up failing to differentiate and playing in the dumb zone.
Position statement example
Four elements make up a brand positioning statement. To start, define who you will serve. Then, lay out where you will play and where you will win. To sum up, use support points for why consumers should believe you.
To illustrate, click on our Brand Positioning statement to help differentiate in the marketplace.
1. Who is the consumer target?
First, define a slice of the population most motivated by what your brand offers. However, don’t just think about who you want but who wants your brand.
2. Where will you play?
Next, consider the competitive set that defines the space in the market your brand competes in. Brand positioning is always relative to who you compete against. For instance, a brand is never fast. It should be faster.
3. Where will you win?
What is the central promise you will make to the consumer target? It should differentiate your brand to be interesting, simple, unique, motivating, and ownable. Do not talk about what you do. (Features) Instead, talk about what the consumer gets (functional benefits). And talk about how the brand makes them feel. (emotional benefits)
4. Why should they believe us?
Finally, lay out the support points and features needed to back up the main promise. Moreover, these support points should close any potential doubts, questions, or concerns the consumer has after hearing the main promise.
To illustrate, click on our Brand Positioning process to differentiate in the market.
When brands make the mistake of trying to be everything to anyone, the brand ends up being nothing to everyone.
Without a clearly defined brand positioning, the brand never establishes the desired reputation with consumers. With a lack of clarity, the execution team lacks direction, so the brand messaging ends up random and confusing to consumers. Marketers should never allow competitors to define the brand because they certainly won’t like how they define the brand. At Beloved Brands, we show how to define the target market and turn product features into benefits with a balance of functional and emotional benefits. We lead workshops to help teams define their brand in ways that set them up to win with consumers. Explore our brand consulting services.
To learn about brand positioning, our Marketing Training will help.
I bring extensive brand management experience working on top global brands at J&J, Coke, General Mills, and Pfizer. Plus, I bring over a decade of brand consulting experience. If your team could benefit from enhanced brand positioning abilities, please visit this link for more information: Beloved Brands Marketing Training.
Brand Positioning Map
Before you get started on the details of your positioning statement, you can sketch out where brands currently play. A brand positioning map allows you to see the most cluttered space and the open space. The brand positioning map provides some direction on establishing a unique positioning for your brand. But it doesn’t provide much detail. Significantly, our process will help narrow the specifics of your brand positioning statement.
Pick two dimensions that matter to consumers.
Below, we can assess the market for sit-down chain restaurants in the US. First, we look at price; high versus low. Then, we might add in flavors; traditional American vs. International. To illustrate, we see two gaps in the market; high-end International and upper-mid American. Moreover, we see a cluttered mess in lower-end American restaurants.
To illustrate, click on our Brand Positioning Map to explore options to differentiate from competitors.
Consumer target
Focus on those who are the most motivated by what you do. There is this myth that a bigger consumer target will make the brand more significant, so scared marketers target ‘everyone.’ For instance, there seems to be an irrational fear of leaving someone out.
Moreover, a broad consumer target gives your brand a lower return on investment and eventually will drain your brand’s limited resources. Please focus. Below, you will find a consumer profile that sets up Gray’s Cookies as an example of our brand positioning. We include consumer insights to give flavor to the target.
Building a Target Profile
To illustrate, click on our Consumer Profile to define your ideal target market.
Before digging into the brand positioning, you want to understand the consumer’s needs. We use 12 different functional needs and 12 different emotional needs. Knowing your consumer target, start thinking about what makes sense for them. These needs will arise later as we explore which consumer benefits to stand behind.
To illustrate, click on our Consumer Needs above. You can zoom in, download it, or share it.
Identifying gaps in the marketplace
To identify where you have an opportunity, you can use market research to help plot your competitors. Plot each brand based on the functional and emotional benefits, and you will begin to see space where there may be an opportunity for you to win. Below, you can see how Gray’s Cookies and Oreo match up regarding functional and emotional benefits. The farther from the center, the stronger that brand plays on that element. Oreo wins on sensory appeal, experience, comfort, and feel-good. To illustrate, you can see Gray’s has the opportunity to win on healthier, smarter, and stay in control.
To illustrate, click on our Brand Positioning spider map to differentiate from your competitor.
Use our consumer benefit ladder to find your differentiation
Turn your brand’s features into consumer benefits. Stop thinking about what your brand does. And, start thinking about what your consumer gets. As a result, your brand positioning statement comes alive.
The four steps to build a Consumer Benefits Ladder:
First, leverage all available consumer research to brief the team. Above all, define the consumer target profile with consumer insights, need states, and the consumer enemy.
Second, brainstorm all possible brand features your brand offers and any brand assets. Importantly, focus on the features that give your brand a competitive advantage.
Next, move up to the functional benefits. Put yourself in the consumer’s shoes, and for each feature on your list, ask, “If I am the consumer, what do I get from that?” Keep asking with answers that differentiate and move into a richer zone.
Finally, move up to the emotional benefits by looking at each functional benefit and asking, “So, if I am the consumer, how does that make me feel?” Clearly, keep asking the question until you see a deeper emotional space that you can play in that will help differentiate your brand.
To illustrate, click on our Consumer Benefits Ladder above. You can zoom in, download it, or share it.
M A R K E T I N G B O O K
beloved brands
The playbook for how to create a brand your consumers will love
Beloved Brands is your secret weapon to guide you through every challenge that you face in managing your brand
Get ready to challenge your mind as we take you on a deep dive to find the most thought-provoking strategic thinking questions that will help you see your brand in a whole new light.
Our unique process for defining your brand positioning will push you to find fresh ideas and new possibilities for how to differentiate your brand based on both functional and emotional benefits.
But we won’t just leave you with ideas – we show how to transform your thinking into action.
Learn how to write a brand plan that everyone can follow, ensuring that all stakeholders are aligned and contributing to your brand’s success.
We’ll walk you through the marketing execution process, from writing an inspiring brief to making smart and breakthrough decisions on both creative advertising and innovation.
And when it comes to analyzing your brand’s performance, we’ve got you covered. Learn how to conduct a dive deep audit on your brand to uncover key issues that you never knew existed.
Our Amazon reviews speak for themselves.
With over 85% of our customers giving us a glowing five-star rating and an overall rating of 4.6 out of 5.0, we know we’re doing something right. And with numerous weeks as the #1 bestseller in brand management, you can trust that we have the experience and expertise to help you achieve success.
"The cheat code for brand managers!"
“It is without a doubt the most practical book for those who want to follow brand management that I have ever read in my life! Beloved Brands is written by a real, experienced marketeer for marketers. This book contains methodologies, tools, templates and thought processes that Graham actually used and uses in his career.”
Avoid ph-at words in your brand positioning
Ph-at Words are vague words that mean so many things, they mean nothing at all. For example, ph-at words include nice, great, interesting, or quality.
When you define your brand positioning, the specific words you choose must matter to your consumers. Importantly, your brand positioning statement should leave zero room for interpretation.
This type of thinking is part of our Beloved Brands positioning process. To help, keep reading below to see how we provide two consumer benefit cheat sheets with 60 functional benefits and 40 emotional benefits to help you write with much more specific words that differentiate your brand.
Video Lesson: Brand Positioning
Our brand positioning statement video shows how to use our functional and emotional benefit cheatsheets. Significantly, we go through how to build the ideal brand positioning statement.
To view, use the ▶️ controls or volume buttons.
How to write a positioning statement
Functional consumer benefits
To help brand leaders kickstart their brand positioning work, I have created 12 functional zones that expand to over 50 potential functional benefits. For instance, as you look through the list, gravitate to the functional benefits you think will fit your consumers’ needs and differentiate your brand by looking for words where your brand does it better than competitors. While you might start with our words, try to layer your creative language with specific category or consumer language.
Our functional benefit cheatsheet determines where you can win
To illustrate, click on our Functional Benefit Cheatsheet above. Zoom in, download it, or share it.
Emotional consumer benefits
From my experience, marketers are better at finding the ideal rational benefits compared with how they work at finding the ideal emotional benefits for their brands. As a brand, you want to own one emotional space in the consumer’s heart as much as you own a rational space in the consumer’s mind.
When I push brand managers to get emotional, they struggle and opt for what they view as obvious emotions, even if they do not fit with their brand. I swear every brand manager thinks their brand should be the trusted, reliable, and likable. Use our cheat sheet to dig deeper on emotions.
Our emotional cheatsheet has twelve emotional consumer benefit zones, which include knowledge, control, comfort, self-assured, optimism, feel myself, liked, freedom, get noticed, sense of belonging, revitalized, and pride.
Our emotional benefit cheatsheet determines where you can win
To illustrate, click on our Emotional Benefit Cheatsheet above. Zoom in, download it, or share it.
Gray's Cookies benefit clusters
To start, look at the two cheat sheets and narrow them down to potential clusters of functional and emotional benefits. Ideally, match what consumers want and what your brand does best. Then, take three zones from each cheat sheet and add 2-3 support words per zone to create a cluster. For example, below are key benefit words we will use to set up Gray’s Cookies as one of our examples of brand positioning statements.
To illustrate, click on our Consumer Benefit sort above. You can zoom in, download it, or share it.
Consumer benefit cluster
Once you focus on the main benefits, you will see a cluster of benefits for your brand. I call this the brand thesaurus. Use these choices to build out a brand positioning statement. Also, you can hand this cluster to your execution team and tell them to stick to these words as they build out their day-to-day communication. To illustrate, below is a completed example of the benefit ladder for Gray’s Cookies.
To illustrate, click on our Consumer Benefit Ladder above. You can zoom in, download it, or share it.
Turn benefit clusters into benefit statements to differentiate your brand
Next, for each cluster, use the words to inspire a brainstorm of specific benefit statements that fit your brand, using the specific brand, consumer, or category words. For example, we’ll use Gray’s Cookies, a fictional cookie brand that combines great taste and low calories. Concerning functional benefits, I have chosen to build around functional clusters, such as healthy, sensory, and experiences, and emotional clusters, such as control, knowledge, and optimism.
To illustrate, click on our Consumer Benefits brainstorm above. You can zoom in, download it, or share it.
How to find the winning space that differentiates your brand in the market
To illustrate, I have created a 2×2 grid to help sort through the potential benefits to find the winners, according to which are most motivating to consumers and most ownable for your brand.
To illustrate, click on our Brand Positioning test above. You can zoom in, download it, or share it.
The same four zones from the Venn diagram are now on the consumer benefits sort grid, including the winning, losing, risky, and dumb zone.
First, the “guilt-free” consumer benefit is highly motivating and highly ownable for the brand, landing in the winning zone. This space best differentiates your brand from others in the market.
On the other hand, the consumer benefit of a “new favorite cookie” is highly motivating but already owned by the central power players, so it falls into the losing zone. Then, the “feel more confident” benefit falls into the risky zone. Finally, the benefit of “more comfort in choices” is neither motivating nor ownable, so it falls into the dumb zone.
Reasons to believe in marketing
I took one logic class at University, and the only thing I learned was ‘premise-premise conclusion.’ Easy class, but the lesson has stuck with me:
- First, all fish live in water (premise)
- Next, tuna are fish (premise)
- Therefore, tuna live in the water (conclusion)
In a brand positioning statement, the main consumer benefit is the conclusion, with a need for two support points as the premises. Therefore, the reason to believe (RTB) should never be the conclusion. If pure logic teaches us that two premises are enough to draw any conclusion, then you only need two RTBs.
Brands that build concepts with a laundry list of RTBs are not doing their job in making focused decisions on what support points are needed. With consumers seeing 5,000 advertising messages daily, having a long list of support points risks cluttering their brand communications. Claims can be an effective tool in helping to support your reason to believe and to help differentiate a brand.
There are four types of claims you can use on your brand:
Process Support
- First, look at how your product works differently.
- Then, showcase what you do differently within the production process.
- Finally, what added service/details do you provide in the value chain?
Product Claims
- First, what is the usage of an ingredient that makes you better?
- Then, look at the process or ingredient that makes you safer.
Third-person endorsement
- To clarify, who are the experts in the field who can speak on your behalf?
- To sum up, look to past users/clients with the proof support of their stories.
Behavioral Results
- To help, look at clinical test results.
- Most importantly, assess the in-market usage study.
- Finally, look at before and after studies.
To illustrate, click on our Brand Positioning support points above. You can zoom in, download it, or share it.
The reason to believe
As you narrow in on the main benefit, look at it from the consumer’s vantage and see if there are gaps you need to fill in with support statements. Use four types of claims, whether linked to what you do differently in the process, how your product works better, third-person endorsements, or behavioral results.
For process support, you can explain how your product works differently, showcase what you do differently within the production process, or discuss any added service you provide in the value chain.
To use product claims, highlight the usage of an ingredient that makes your brand better, different, safer, or cheaper.
Use third-person endorsements when you can access experts who can speak on your brand’s behalf or a substantial collection of past users/clients who can demonstrate proof of performance based on stories or reviews. And explore recognized awards, such as J.D. Power or whatever is recognized in your industry. Definitely, reach for behavioral results when you have a clinical test, in-market usage study, or before and after studies.
Example of a brand positioning statement
Consumer packaged goods brand
In conclusion, here is our Gray’s Cookies case study, which serves as one of our examples of brand positioning statements. The guilt-free uses emotions to help differentiate the brand from other cookies.
To illustrate, click on our Brand Positioning example above. You can zoom in, download it, or share it.
Brand Key Model
A Brand Key model is a tool from consumer marketing that allows marketers to lay out their brand’s unique selling proposition (USP) elements on one page. This article will go through the Brand Key model explained with nine elements that build the USP. And, with each element, we will show you the work you need to do. Moreover, we will leave you with plenty of Brand Key examples so that you can see how it will work on a brand like yours.
Using the brand key model for a consumer brand
Below is the Brand Key example for Gray’s Cookies. They are shifting from a product-led to an idea-led brand, trying to own “The best tasting yet guilt-free pleasure so you can stay in control of your weight.”
To illustrate, click on our Brand Key Example above. You can zoom in, download it, or share it.
Brand positioning for B2B brands
As you did with Gray’s Cookies, start by looking at the two cheat sheets and narrow down to potential clusters of the B2B functional and B2B emotional benefits. Most importantly, match what customers want and what your brand does best. I recommend that you take three of the zones from each cheat sheet that will best differentiate your brand and then add 2-3 support words per zone to create a cluster. Below are the benefit clusters that set up our Gray’s Stage Lighting brand. In short, Gray’s Stage Lighting is an example of B2B brand positioning.
Customer benefit clusters for B2B
To illustrate, click on our B2B Brand Positioning above. You can zoom in, download it, or share it.
Taking the clusters and brainstorming brand positioning benefit statements
To illustrate, click on our B2B Brand Positioning above. You can zoom in, download it, or share it.
B2B Brand Positioning example
Most importantly, we use Gray’s Lighting as a B2B case study that serves as our example of brand positioning statements. If you are a B2B marketer, we have created a unique page to help explain what you need to be successful: B2B Marketing
To illustrate, click on our B2B Brand Positioning Statement above. You can zoom in, download it, or share it.
Using the brand key model for a B2B brand
Below is the Brand Key example for Gray’s Industrial Products, a successful experience-led brand selling tools in the construction industry. The brand idea is “Same day deliver backed by the smartest advice in the tool business.” The delivery is relatively a table stakes benefit that must be said. Still, the real discriminator is hiring retired tradespeople who can provide advice as part of their service. As Gray’s now battles Amazon, which is mainly price/speed, they’ll have to catch up to Amazon on speed to neutralize that main benefit. But, they can continue to win by playing up their unique selling proposition of peer-to-peer advice.
To illustrate, click on our B2B Brand Key example above. You can zoom in, download it, or share it.
Brand Strategy
Does your brand have unrealized potential?
Here are five questions you need to be able to answer about your brand:
- First, can you describe your brand in seven seconds in a way that motivates consumers to engage and in a space that is own-able for your brand?
- Second, are you making the right investments to create a market impact for your brand and lead to a performance result for your business?
- Next, does everyone on your team know their role and how they contribute to building a successful brand?
- Does your marketing execution establish your desired brand positioning and move customers to purchase?
- Finally, are you investing in your people to ensure they make smarter decisions and produce exceptional work that drives business growth?
Your team will be confused if you cannot answer these five questions. Your brand investments will be scattered and won’t pay back. You will see inconsistent execution in the market. The consumer will not know how to define your brand. And you won’t grow! It is time to make decisions.
Can you describe your brand in seven seconds in a way that motivates consumers and in a space that own-able for your brand?
Everyone should know what your brand stands for. Employees, partners, and customers should all use the exact words.
At Beloved Brands, we will help you define your brand to set you up to win in the marketplace. To start, we define your ideal consumer and work with you to build a brand positioning balanced with functional and emotional benefits.
We summarize your brand by creating a brand idea that you can stand behind and steers everyone who works behind the scenes of the brand.
We leave you with the brand positioning elements of a brand book. Undoubtedly, everyone who works on the brand must know how to describe your brand in 7 seconds, 60 seconds, or 30 minutes.
We help brands define themselves so they can drive new growth opportunities.
At Beloved Brands, our brand strategy process will help you define your brand and map out a strategic plan for the best possible future for your brand.
We will help you define your brand positioning statement and narrow it down to a brand idea that is your seven-second pitch. Then, we challenge you to select the right strategic investments for your brand and build a plan everyone can follow.
Importantly, you need your marketing execution to build your brand reputation in the market and move customers along their purchase journey.
Brand positioning for healthcare
For Gray’s QuitFix, the three functional benefit zones include working better, sensory appeal, and helping you be healthier.
Next, take the supporting words within each zone to build a cluster.
Using the “works better” zone, we include powerful details and performance. For the “sensory appeal” zone, include the words subconscious, taste, and touch/feel. When using the “helps you be healthier” zone, include the words reduces, prevents, weight, and mental health. Take each benefit cluster to inspire a brainstorm of various benefit statements. Start each functional benefits statement with “I get.”
- For instance, the “works better” benefit cluster can drive a functional benefit statement is, “I get a smoking aid that successfully delivers the performance for me to quit smoking.”
- And, for the “helps you be healthier” benefit cluster, a functional benefit statement is, “I get to control my mental health while quitting smoking.”
Then, explore the emotional zones.
- Using the emotional benefit of “stay in control,” the emotional benefit statement would be, “I feel in control of my weight and health to help me successfully quit smoking.”
For Gray’s QuitFix, the winning consumer benefit statements are staying in control and the optimism to be successful in quitting.
Below, we can show how to differentiate a pharma brand by helping to stay in control. If you are a Healthcare marketer, we have created a unique page to help explain what you need to be successful: Healthcare Marketing
To illustrate, click on our Brand Positioning example for a healthcare brand above.
Brand Positioning for a technology brand
This same process can work with technology or service brands. For example, with GrayTech, the main B2B benefit to differentiate with is to “make your business more valuable.”
To illustrate, click on the technology brand positioning statement example to show how to differentiate a tech brand
Brand positioning template
Use our brand positioning presentation template to showcase your great thinking to your boss and team.
Brand positioning examples
Most importantly, we know that our brand positioning process works on any brand. To illustrate, click on any brand positioning examples to explore new ways to differentiate your brand. Above all, we have almost any type of business covered. To illustrate, click on any examples to zoom in for details.
To illustrate, click on our Brand Positioning example above. You can zoom in, download it, or share it.
To illustrate, click on our Brand Positioning example above. You can zoom in, download it, or share it.
To illustrate, click on our Brand Positioning example above. You can zoom in, download it, or share it.
To illustrate, click on our Brand Positioning example above. You can zoom in, download it, or share it.
To illustrate, click on our Brand Positioning example above. You can zoom in, download it, or share it.
To illustrate, click on our Brand Positioning example above. You can zoom in, download it, or share it.
To illustrate, click on our Brand Positioning example above. You can zoom in, download it, or share it.
To illustrate, click on our Brand Positioning example above. You can zoom in, download it, or share it.
To illustrate, click on our Brand Positioning example above. You can zoom in, download it, or share it.
To illustrate, click on our Brand Positioning example above. You can zoom in, download it, or share it.
To illustrate, click on our Brand Positioning example above. You can zoom in, download it, or share it.
Brand Positioning Skills
Our marketing training program takes participants through every stage in defining the brand positioning. We teach your marketing team the four elements of brand positioning: who you serve, where you play, where you win, and why consumers should believe you. As a result, these four elements comprise the consumer target, marketplace definition, consumer benefit, and support points.
Too often, brands try to be everything to anyone. They end up being nothing to everyone. Without a clearly defined brand positioning, the brand never establishes an ideal reputation with consumers. This allows competitors to define the brand. Essentially, the team who executes lacks direction, so the brand messaging appears random and confusing.
With our marketing training, we start by determining the ideal target market. Participants learn to add flavor to the target market definition with moments of accelerated needs, consumer insights, and the consumer’s enemy. Most importantly, the deeper understanding marketers can gain about the consumer, the easier they know how to address their needs.
Engaging our consumer benefit cheat sheets
Next, we show how to turn product features into consumer benefits–a balance of functional and emotional benefits. Uniquely, we introduce our “Benefit cheat sheets” to allow participants to play around with 60 different functional and 40 emotional consumer benefits.
Brand positioning will be stronger if summarized it in a space that is highly motivating to consumers and highly ownable for the brand. In addition, claims and support points help finalize the brand positioning statement.
Your marketing team will learn how to develop a brand idea that can organize all stakeholders who work with the brand. Also, we provide tools to turn your brand’s unique value proposition into a brand concept. We also show how to build a brand story or credo to help steer the culture and operations behind the brand.
The brand positioning skills we build through our marketing training
- First, the best marketers define an ideal target market (consumers, users, shoppers) framed with accelerated need states, insights and enemies.
- Next, marketers must take a consumer-centric approach to turn product features into functional and emotional consumer benefits.
- Then, know how to find the winning brand positioning space that is own-able for the brand and motivating to your target, summarized with a positioning statement.
- Finally, be able to develop a brand idea that can steer how the brand shows up to every touchpoint, and organize everyone who works on the brand so they deliver.
To illustrate, click on our Brand Positioning Models below. You can zoom in, download it, or share it.
Brand Positioning FAQ
What are the major steps in brand positioning?
- First, define the consumer target. Use segmentation of different types of consumers, add in the consumer insights and the enemy.
- Second, list out all the product features. What do you do better or different than competitors.
- Third, turn those features into functional benefits and emotional benefits. In the voice of your customer, what do I get? And, how does that make me feel?
- Next, write benefit statements and test them with your target. Focus on the winning statements. Clearly, they should be motivating to your target. And, ownable for your brand.
- Then, add in two key support points or claims that back up your main benefit statement.
- Finally, put the brand positioning statement together with the target, category you play in, the winning benefit, and two reasons to believe.
Why is brand positioning important?
The main role of brand positioning is to align everyone who works on the brand, so that you can build a brand reputation that matches the brand positioning. While a reputation takes time, you want all of your communication, new product ideas, customer experience, and sales ideas to match up to the brand positioning. Importantly, explain how you will you use your resources to drive growth on your brand.
What are common brand positioning mistakes?
First, the most common mistake is having too many messages. It will confuse your target. They won’t know how to describe your brand, or know why they should buy your brand instead of a competitor. When they don’t know, they will only buy your brand when it is on sale.
Second, the other common mistake I see in brand positioning is too broad of a target. There is a lot of debate about the role of light buyers. My argument is that if they were light buyers before you told them your main message, they’ll likely stay light buyers after. Instead, having a base of loyal users can drive higher profits. That allows you to use their higher frequency to use the investment to keep building a larger base.
Third, marketers can be too logical and focus mainly on the functional benefits. Yet, there is a lot of research that shows the value of emotional benefits. Use our emotional cheat sheet to find those emotions that will make your brand stronger.
Finally, the mistake I see with brand positioning is not using it in the advertising. I see too many creative briefs with laundry lists of features and claims, and not enough with a focused main message.
What are the best examples of brand positioning?
We can see how brand positioning helps the best brands in the world. For example, Nike helps athletes go beyond their expectations. Or, Apple makes technology simple so people can do more and get more from their laptops, phones, or watches. And, Volvo is about safety. Clearly, T-Mobile is the un-carrier who goes against the norms of the communication industry. For example, Special K helps people stay in control of their weight.
