Successful marketing starts with positioning

What is positioning?

In a nutshell, positioning is the position you want to occupy in the mind of your target audience that differentiates you from your competition. How do you want your target audience to think about your brand? Do you want to be seen as the price fighter or do you want to excel in quality products? You can very deliberately attach characteristics, associations and attributes to your brand. Think about the topics you write or talk about and the experience your customer has when they purchase or use your product.

Why should you choose a positioning?

The result of good positioning is that your target audience finds that your brand is relevant to them. When people find that, you are stored in a box "remembered" in their brain. For each product, as a customer, you have a few brands that are interesting and relevant to you.

What car brand is on your mind? Which car would qualify for your next purchase and which would you want to buy if you won the lotto tomorrow? How great would it be if people thought of your company in such a way that you were at the top of an option list.

How do you choose a positioning?

Your company can differentiate itself in several pillars. For each brand, this is different. We discuss the five most commonly used ones. Which pillars fit your brand?

Positioning on Price

Are you a price fighter and is your price always the lowest? Or does your brand stand for higher prices and high product quality? Or perhaps your brand stands for transparent and reliable prices.

Positioning on Quality

Your product is the best quality of all. Or is your product unique in material, features or technology? All points by which you can distinguish yourself and what helps to claim your position in your industry.

“Windproof storm umbrellas are strong and designed to withstand heavy winds up to 120 km/h.”

- Senz°

Positioning on Experience

What experience does a customer have with you? What emotion does your product or service evoke? What speaks to your brand? And how unique is that? How do they experience your marketing, the first time the customer interacts with your brand and has the product in their hands, the first experience with it?

Disneyland Paris is the ultimate example of a company that focuses on experience.

Positioning on Service

What impression do customers get when they interact with your brand? How do you interact with your customers? How is your service and guidance to customers, offline and online? Do you stand for personal attention and guidance and the best service? Or do you expect a high degree of self-reliance from your customer and limit yourself to much-needed help?

Positioning on Access

In what place, at what time and through what channel or medium do you offer your product or service, and is it distinctive? Do you deliver to your home or do customers have to go to a "physical" store? Can anyone access your product or is it behind a code, subscription or membership?

BONUS: Positioning on Planet

In recent years, companies have become increasingly aware of the impact they make on the world: the climate, the approach to people, collaborations and partnerships, the consequences of certain materials and so on. Laws and regulations also enforce it to design your business to have a positive(er) impact on the earth.

How you handle this assignment depends on how you want to position your company. Do you want to be known as the place where people are treated equally? As an employer that gives people room to be themselves? As a company that contributes to society? Do you want to make your production chain 100% fair trade, or do you make choices in which parts you design to be as sustainable as possible? These are all elements that influence the business and experience of your brand.

Risks of a weak positioning

You have weak positioning if your target audience cannot interpret you properly and unambiguously. Or if your positioning does not come from the capillaries of your company. Or if your positioning is not as concisely reflected throughout everything as you would like.

"If your positioning is vague or unclear, you will miss out on customers".

Potential customers can't clearly tell what you do, who you do it for and what you're about if your positioning is vague. They don't know exactly what they have to gain from you and therefore it is easy to forget about you. It is more likely that customers won't feel anything about your brand. That they don't see the added value of your brand. That your brand will not live. You miss out on those customers.

Conversely: The better your company knows what it stands for, the better you can convey it to customers.

Even within your company, vague positioning is noticeable and has consequences. It's difficult to make choices and decisions because you don't have a clear guide to measure your internal choices against. Your employees don't know your vision and your company lacks focus. This often manifests itself in less engaged people and moderate growth or stagnation in growth.

Make your positioning powerful

Your company is also looking for a relevant positioning that meets the needs of your customers. Because that's when you perform best. Define your positioning and spread the word! Because your company is unique and everyone should know it.

Positioning can be learned. For example, in this free online training. Moreover, you will learn how to communicate your positioning, attracting leads and customers. Sign up below, then you will receive the first lesson directly in your mailbox.