Brand Positioning: What It Is and How to Use It
Brand positioning is a way to clarify, differentiate, and articulate your brand. But how does it work?
Grab a sheet of paper and a pen and let’s start with an exercise:
In one or two sentences, how would you describe what your business does and why people should choose it?
Harder than it sounds, right?
This was an exercise in defining brand positioning.
Even branding professionals struggle with this. Articulating my brand positioning was one of my biggest challenges during my rebranding process. It’s not easy to summarize an entire businesses in such a short format. I found myself wanting to throw my laptop across the room every time I revisited the task. It took me hours, over the course of several weeks, to get it down.
So why put all this effort into writing one or two sentences? It might seem insignificant, but it’s a crucial part of brand and marketing strategy.
If you’re sitting there with a furrowed brow, wondering what I’m talking about, don’t worry. It’s not just you. It’s a little bewildering. Let’s break it down.
What is Brand Positioning?
Put simply, positioning is the space you want your brand to occupy in people’s minds. It’s a component of brand strategy that defines what you want to be known and remembered for.
Defining brand positioning is like planting a flag in your market niche. If you could take “the market” and make a map of it, your positioning would be where you drop a little pin that says, “Here I am!” By identifying your purpose, your target audience, and the differentiating factors between you and similar businesses, you can determine where this pin would go.
Here’s a chair metaphor.
Imagine you’re in a room containing a bookshelf, a TV, and a desk. There are also three chairs which are completely identical except for their location in the room.
Chair #1 is next to the bookshelf.
Chair #2 is in front of the TV.
Chair #3 is pushed in at the desk.
If the chairs are all the same, the only differentiating factor is where they are relative to everything else. But based solely on this single factor, you can pretty clearly identify what each chair is for and who would use it.
Chair #1 is for reading. It would be used by someone who wants a quiet place to sit and read a book.
Chair #2 is for viewing. It would be used by someone who wants to a comfy spot to kick back and watch a movie.
Chair #3 is for working. It’s for someone who wants a place to sit and answer emails.
Brand positioning works the same way, but on a more subtle and abstract level. Even though there are other businesses who do what you do, you can position yourself based on what types of people would benefit from the aspects of your brand that make you unique.
Why is Brand Positioning Important?
Brand positioning is all about differentiation. Differentiation influences consumer choice.
Our world is saturated with options. There are a lot of choices for just about every kind of product or service that you can think of.
Want to buy some socks? There are hundreds of brands that make them. If the retailers didn’t differentiate from each other, how would you know what brand will work best for you? If all they did was say, “We got socks,” would that motivate you to choose one brand over another? Probably not, because it doesn’t provide you with any information about why that brand is a good choice for you.
There are subtle signals that influence what brand you choose.
Let’s say you try to buy only clothes made from sustainable, ethically-sourced materials. Certain words and phrases, types of information, and style characteristics will trigger responses based on this preference. If you see the phrase “made with 100% organic, fair-trade cotton” in bold type on a retailer’s website, it might compel you to browse their products with more interest.
This is not an accident. Brands choose their words carefully based on who their target audience is and what’s important and appealing to them.
This isn’t shady marketing tactics. It’s positioning.
Positioning helps you focus your branding and marketing efforts based on what you help with, who needs that help, and why you’re the right person to help them. The sock retailer that uses all-natural, organic cotton fabric knows that their products will be most relevant to people who care about the environment or who have a strong preference for natural materials. You might never see their positioning statement, but their positioning is how they crafted their marketing to appeal to you.
Without defining your positioning, your branding and marketing efforts will lack clarity and focus. If your branding and marketing is all over the place, the people who will benefit most from your offerings aren’t getting the message. The message needs to be unified and crystal clear across every part of your brand, from design to website copy to your choice of marketing channels.
What is a Brand Positioning Statement?
How your brand’s positioning takes shape.
Brands are ideas. They’re abstract. You can’t hold a brand in your hands or put it in your pocket. That’s why we use design, images, language, and actions to make brands real. Positioning is part of the abstract nature of branding.
To help you make this idea more real, you can create a summary of your business that helps steer the ship. This is called a brand positioning statement.
A brand positioning statement summarizes what you do, who you do it for, and how you’re different from other brands.
You use your brand positioning statement as a reference point for all your branding and marketing efforts. It’s not something you’d share with your audience. Rather, it’s a way of measuring whether what you’re putting out is aligning with your purpose. When writing content for a social media post, for instance, you can refer to your positioning statement and assess whether what you’re saying and how you’re saying it is aligned with who you want to reach and reflects your unique personality.
Let’s look at an example statement from the real world:
“Mailchimp is an all-in-one marketing platform that empowers small businesses to launch, build and grow with help from easy-to-use marketing and commerce tools, award-winning support and inspiring content.”
If we break this down, we can see that they touch on each of the points I mentioned earlier and pinpoint their positioning precisely.
What they do/help with: marketing for launching, building, and growing businesses
Who they help: small businesses
What makes them unique: easy-to-use tools, great customer support, and inspiring content
It always seems so easy breezy when looking at it from the other side, but this positioning statement probably required many meetings, lots of input, and a boatload of refining.
But you’re not Mailchimp and neither am I. So what does it take to get to such clarity and brevity?
Luckily, this is one of the few brand strategy components that come with a set formula.
How to Write Your Brand Positioning Statement
Before you utilize the formula, you need some information to plug in. Start by answering these questions about your business:
How would you categorize your product or service? How is it relevant to the world and your industry or market niche? How would others categorize it?
Who is your target audience? What demographic traits, personal traits, and values do they share? (For help with this, refer to my post on creating audience personas)
What are the main challenges (pain points) that your audience has in the context of your niche or industry? What negative emotions do they feel when they are trying to solve a problem or meet a need in this context? Are they confused, frustrated, unsure, suspicious, overwhelmed?
What do you help your target audience with with? How do you solve this problem/meet this need for them? What positive emotions will they feel after engaging with your product/service? Will they be excited, proud, free, relaxed?
What makes you different from other businesses who do what you do? Is it your exceptional customer service, innovative design, attention to detail, use of cutting edge technology? What is missing in your niche that you provide?
What is the proof of why you’re different? What tangible assets or attributes demonstrate your uniqueness and value?
Next, it’s time to plug in that info.
There are many versions of this formula with varying structures and terminology. They all use roughly the same pieces of information, so you can choose one that adapts best to your business type or particular service (feel free to look up other variations).
Here’s one option:
For [target audience] looking to [problem/need], [your brand name] provides [service/product] that gives you [benefit/positive outcome]. Unlike other [brands in your category], we have/are/do [differentiating factor and proof].
Target audience: who do you help?
Problem/need: what do they need help with?
Benefits/positive outcome: what will they have, how will they feel?
Differentiating factor/proof: what do you verifiably do or have that others don’t?
Here’s another variation I like, adapted from Kevin Namaky:
>> To [target audience], [brand name] is the brand of/that [niche category] that [benefit]. That’s because, unlike [brands in your category], [proof].
Here’s an example based on a made-up brand using each of these variations of the formula.
Brand name: StudyMate
Service/product: education workflow platform
Target audience: teen learners
Problem/need: help staying on top of schoolwork
Benefit/positive outcomes: more organized, relaxed, more time for fun
Differentiating factor/proof: intuitive design, teacher communication portal
For teen learners looking to stay on top of schoolwork, StudyMate provides an education workflow platform that helps you stay organized so you can spend less time stressing, and more time relaxing. Unlike the other clunky, out-dated platforms, StudyMate’s intuitive design is easy to use and comes with a built-in communication portal so you can stay in touch with your teachers.
Or, to use the other variation:
To teen learners, StudyMate is the brand that helps you stay on top of your schoolwork so you can spend less time stressing, and more time relaxing. That’s because, unlike the other clunky, out-dated education workflow platforms, StudyMate’s intuitive design is easy to use and comes with a built-in communication portal so you can stay in touch with your teachers.
How To Use Your Positioning Statement
Brand positioning is part of brand strategy and is meant to be used.
Writing a positioning statement is well and good (actually, it kinda sucks, but hey, you can do it!!), but what do you do with it?
As I mentioned before, your positioning statement isn’t meant to be visible to your customers. It does sound sort of like an elevator pitch or an advertisement, but if you actually used it word for word, it would sound pretty awkward. However, it’s a perfect starting point for developing anything branding or marketing related.
Putting your positioning statement to use is as simple as referencing when you’re creating designs and copy. Let’s imagine how StudyMate might use their statement to create some branding and marketing assets.
Brand Positioning in Visual Design
StudyMate’s founder hired a designer to create a visual brand identity. They shared this statement with their designer. The designer quickly understands who the design needs to appeal to (teen students, parents, and educators), knows that it’s important to reflect the great design of the UX/UI, and knows the takeaway benefit is a feeling of being organized and less stressed about school.
The designer creates a visual identity that hits all these targets. They use bright, on-trend colors that will appeal to teens, balanced with clean and modern typography that will appeal to the adults in their lives. The simplicity of the design evokes a feeling of orderliness and the contemporary feel reflects the thoughtful use of technology that creates a great user experience.
Brand Positioning in Marketing
StudyMate purchased ad space at a couple subway stations in Manhattan. They sent the statement to the ad agency, along with the brand style guide provided by the designer. Because the statement efficiently summarizes the brand’s positioning, the agency has a clear understanding of what they need to achieve. They can come up with copy for the advertisements based on the brand’s target audience, and can pull some phrases, words, or ideas from the statement itself.
The agency creates an ad that reads, “Less time stressin’, more time chillin’. StudyMate gives teens their time back.” Of course, they also used all the brand’s visual elements to make the design feel consistent with everything else the business puts out. Duh.
Branding is a process that asks us to think in abstract terms. While this can be challenging (and incredibly frustrating at times), it’s always worth the effort. Positioning pays you back with consistent messaging, and way less guesswork.