What Is Positioning?
How can we carve out a “position” for your business in a crowded marketplace? Positioning refers to how your business creates an image or identity in the minds of your target consumer, giving them a reason to choose your offerings over others. Positioning is considered relative to your competition. Using bullet points, clearly identify what makes your offerings unique. Next, ask yourself if your name, logo, tagline, messaging and visuals allow your prospective clients to understand what you are trying to communicate.
What Is Branding?
The official definition of a brand has evolved over time. The American Marketing Association defines a brand as “a name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or combination of them, designed to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of the competition.”
Building Brand Equity
Brand equity is a company or product’s reputation in the marketplace. For your customers, it means how well do they know and trust your brand? To build strong brand equity, a company must repeatedly deliver reliable results to create trust between the target and the brand. Overtime, aspects of a company’s packaging design, logo, type face, color, or leaders become just as representative of the company itself. Nike is an example of a company that has built exceptionally strong brand equity with its AirJordan success. Build brand equity by targeting the right audience with the right message at the correct stage in their buyer journey. The product’s position in its life cycle will determine what those objectives are as they relate to brand development.
Questions to consider include:
- Who is most likely going to use or purchase this?
- How will the product be available? How can they book/purchase/find?
- What is the perceived value of the product in the marketplace?
- How well does the product stand against the competition?
- What specific benefits will they experience from using it?
- What is the perceived value of the product in the marketplace?