What is Market Positioning Strategy?
A market positioning strategy is about differentiating your brand from competitors in an effort to appeal to customers. The positioning strategy helps companies identify their unique value compared with others and communicate it effectively.
For example, when a company wants to differentiate itself in the market by standing out from the crowd of other brands, it can make use of products or services that are unique, have high customer value, and are hard to find in the market.
Being able to identify your brand’s "unique spot" allows you to know what you need to do to stand out from competitors.
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A market positioning strategy is a process of targeting a specific market to promote your product or service. It includes building and adjusting your marketing mix to make sure that you are targeting the right audience.
The purpose of this strategy is to increase your chances of success in the market. It also helps you develop a brand that resonates with your target audience and ultimately creates profits for the company.
Market Positioning Strategy can be done at different levels like the product, service, and competitive positioning. Some examples of competitive positioning include offering higher quality services or products than others, differentiation strategies, price position, channel position, and where it’s sold.
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Market positioning is one of the most significant factors to consider before a product launch. Market positioning is the process of defining the target market for a product and introducing it to them.
While there are a lot of strategies involved in market positioning, including pricing, distribution channels, and messaging, some of the more popular ones include segmentation, size-based branding, and geographic targeting.
Why do Brands Need a Strong Market Positioning Strategy?
A strong market positioning strategy is key to a brand's success. It is the most important part of a brand's marketing plan as it helps establish expertise, a point of view, and how the brand can help its target audience which in turn leads to customer loyalty.
Some factors that affect a brand's positioning strategy include the company's own personal values and culture, competitive landscape, industry trends, and customers' needs.
In this article, we will discuss why brands need a strong market positioning strategy and some of the factors that are crucial for achieving this goal.
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A brand's position is determined by its target audience and their needs. Having a clear understanding of what the company delivers to the market gives the company an edge in making its brand known to a wider range of consumers.
A strong positioning strategy can help brands create a long-term, sustainable foothold in their market.
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Market positioning strategies are a key component of a successful brand strategy. The strategic use of market positioning is what differentiates successful brands from weaker brands and helps them push ahead.
The market position strategy is about creating a unique positioning that makes your brand stand out from its competitors and ensures the customers' value for it. It includes identifying key target audiences, achieving differentiation in messaging, establishing credible credentials, and creating competitive advantage through new innovations in experience and service delivery.
Some of the reasons for brands to establish a strong market position strategy include:
- A greater potential for success
- Valuable insights into how consumers think about their products/services, their wants, and needs, and how they achieve value from them
What are the Different Types of Market Positioning Strategies and What are the Main Differences between Them?
Market positioning strategies vary between one another in terms of approaches and the types of positioning. When it comes to the types of market position strategies, they can be broadly classified into three types:
1. Positioning strategy that emphasizes high levels of differentiation from competitors. This strategy is also known as niche-based positioning.
2. Positioning strategy that accentuates offering best value for customers. This is also known as brand-based positioning.
3. Positioning strategy that points out being better than competitors in a particular area or specific customer need or experience but without emphasizing differentiation from other competitors (known as value-based positioning).
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In order to understand the concept of market positioning, one should take into account that a product is positioned by its marketing manager.
Product positioning can be done on three levels: product, company and company brand.
The first level of positioning is about how the product fits into a market. For example it may be positioned as a budget product or a luxury brand. It can also be positioned as offering unique features or niche benefits within the context of its market.
The second level of positioning is about what type of company produces the product within its given context. An example would be Apple which has been positioned as having good quality products or Microsoft with its focus on software and services. The third level is about what kind of brand image the company wants to project to its customers in order to increase loyalty and repeat purchases
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Market positioning is about understanding what your market wants and finding ways to communicate with them effectively.
There are a few different types of market position strategies. Market positioning is a broad term that includes advertising, marketing communication, product design processes and brand management.
The different types of market positioning can be broken down into three main categories: descriptive, functional, and value-based. They differ in the way their main purpose is achieved. Descriptive marketing tactics focus on satisfying needs through features or attributes while functional marketing focuses on satisfying wants through benefits or performance while value-based marketing focuses on satisfying values or needs.
How to Create a Successful Market Positioning Strategy for Your Business?
A market position strategy is one of the most important things that you need to think about when starting a business. This is because it will help shape the foundation of your business.
To build a successful market positioning strategy, you need to create an algorithm that defines what your brand stands for and where it wants to go in a given year.
The atlas map should be created with data from which your brand can draw from and use as reference points for navigating the competitive landscape.
Some businesses invest in paid advertising but others are able to gain significant customer traction by investing in content marketing strategies, giveaways, contests, etc.
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If a company doesn't have a clear view on how it wants to position itself in the market, it might find that its sales are hampered.
If you're not sure about your brand's positioning, you can use an algorithm that describes your company's market position strategy. The process involves brainstorming and evaluating what possibilities exist for your business and then narrowing them down to three or four options that you think will work best for your business.
Once you have those, you can then run other calculations to compare your options with their outcomes. These calculations provide insight into whether or not one option is better than the others from both a quantitative standpoint and from an overall qualitative standpoint.
Creating a successful market positioning strategy requires careful thinking about who would buy the product (your audience) and what factors make up their lives
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A lot of companies struggle to create a successful market position strategy for their business. The biggest reason behind this is the lack of understanding of what positioning means and how to do it in the first place.
This doesn't have to be a complicated task. Instead, you just need to follow these seven steps and find your perfect map:
- Define target customer profile
- Define your company's positioning statement(s)
- Identify positive and negative attributes of your brand
- List core product or service attributes that make up your brand
- Research competitors
- Map out your competitors' competitors
- Map out industry opportunities and threats
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