I have heard and probably used many different ways to define branding. I’m not quite sure why it’s such an enigma. There are so many different variations and different definitions maybe it’s because brand means different things to different people or maybe it’s because branding has evolved as a subset of marketing into this overarching discipline. I’m not sure why there is confusion on why there are so many different ideas and opinions and philosophies about branding but what I am certain about is that the main reason that you brand your business is to make your business more relevant to who your audience is and to give them meaning as to what your brand and what your business can give them in their lives and that is why we brand our businesses to give them that meaning, to give them that context so that they consider your brand when it comes to that buying decision. Without a shadow of debt, the most important element of branding your business is to give them that reason to look towards your brand and that is what positioning your brand is all about.
We live in a world where we have maybe 10 – 100 different options for a given product or service on any given day and our brains are not able to digest all of that information. The way our brains work is it filters most of it out and it only allows a fraction of that information in and when it does allow that information in, it stores it in a part of the brain. That is based on our individual experiences but it’s also based on how the brand attempts to position itself. That is the opportunity that you have as a brand builder to shape the mind of your audience. Yes, they will dismiss most of the information that’s out there but there is a segment of the market that will give your brand that slight chance to shape their mind and that is what you need to consider when developing your positioning strategy or when developing your message is to understand the image that you want to own in their mind and allow your position and your message to shape that image.
How do you define a positioning strategy to shape the mind of your audience? Well, I’m going to give you eight principles that you can use to do just that.
Identify the WHO
Your brand exists for one reason and one reason only and that is to serve your audience. Yes, your brand will generate revenue but that is a by-product of serving your audience. Your principal primary goal is to serve your audience and to be there to give them what they need. If you don’t understand exactly who that audience is you’re not going to be able to serve them at the highest level. If on the other hand, you take the time to understand exactly who they are then you can develop your position, your product and service, and your solution to meet their needs. You can also use it to shape your messaging to own a specific image in their mind. It’s not just the image that you need to own in their mind, it’s the right image for the right mind principle.
Identify the Alternative
Your audience will have a need and want and there will already be brands in the market serving those needs and every one of those brands will have their reason as to why their audience should choose them. You need to understand what players are in the market and what reasons they’re giving your shared audience to choose them because this will represent an opportunity for you. It’ll represent an opportunity to see the gaps in the market and the possibilities of alternative solutions or a differentiation strategy that you can use to separate yourself from all of those other alternatives. You must identify who is playing within the market landscape so that you can identify those gaps and opportunities.
Define Your Difference
I can’t stress this enough and I’m not going to sugar-coat it either. This is one of the most important tasks if not the most important task in the whole spectrum of branding and it’s probably one of the most difficult tasks as well because when you sit down to define a differentiation strategy for your brand on the face of it, it looks like all the best position are taken and you’re left sitting on the side-lines but it does take a bit of time, care, attention, and a creative mind to unblock an effective differentiation strategy. But you need to give your differentiation strategy that time, care, and attention so you can find something compelling to give your audience a reason to choose your brand over your competitors.
Focus Your Products
You might have one product or even a hundred products but once you have your differentiation strategy there and you know what you want to mean to your audience then you can use that as a guiding principle when developing out your products. If you think about the apple back in 1997, Steve Jobs came back after many years away and apple was developing all sorts of different products and he sat down with the product development team for weeks and after a while, he just lost his cool. He shouted stop, this is crazy. We’re cutting 70% of the products because we want to mean a certain thing to our audience. He was so focused on what he wanted the brand Apple to mean to the audience and he knew that most of these products weren’t aligned with that difference and meaning. Take that into your brand when developing your product to make sure that your products are focused on that differentiation strategy.
Determine Your Price
The price that will set for our products and the price point that we set for our brand has an influencing factor on where our audience is going to position our brands. If you think about luxury car brands we associate luxury car brands with high prices or if we think about discounted car brands we associated them with a low price. That is a very basic example of this but the price is a very important consideration when it comes to the differentiation strategy that you want to own in the mind of your audience. Take the time to consider what price that you’re going to place in the market and what that means in the terms of the position that you want to own compared to your competitors.
Identify Your Place
This seems like a bit of a no-brainer when I talk about a place I’m talking about your location. Are you physical or digital or both? That’s pretty much the choice there but up until recently you had a lot of businesses that were operating a certain way and they weren’t forced in any way to change how they’re operating. If you think about what the covid pandemic has done to the world you had a lot of brick and mortar businesses just operating as brick and mortar businesses and they were forced to adapt. Some of those businesses have achieved a higher level based on the forced evolution that they’ve had to go through. You know these businesses might not have even considered this approach before the covid pandemic. It goes to show that your place is still a very important consideration and you need to take the time to think about it strategically.
Define Your Experience
You can’t do this until you’ve defined your differentiation strategy but once you have done that then you can understand what kind of experience is going to help to solidify that position in the mind of your audience. When you know that you can take the time to develop an experience for your brand to understand the journey that your customer is on. Map out that customer journey and then design that experience.
Distill Your Position
This is all about selecting a few choice words to represent exactly what you want your brand to mean to your audience and you use those words as an anchor in their mind. I’m talking about your tagline. Some of the world's biggest brands are in a very privileged position and they’ve chosen taglines that can represent an idea. I’ll give you an example, Nike has the tagline “Just Do It.” This doesn’t speak to the products that they sell. It doesn’t speak to the running shoes that they were born from. Phil Knight developed Blue Ribbon way back in the 70s and that later became Nike but if he had chosen “Just Do It” as the tagline for Blue Ribbon it probably wouldn’t have worked because he didn’t have that level of brand awareness. Those sorts of taglines are reserved for the big end of town and for those who have high brand awareness but when it comes to developing your brand and solidifying a position in the mind of your audience you need to use every tool at your disposal and your tagline is a great way to plant a seed in the mind of your audience as to what your brand should mean to them.
There is no more important task in the whole spectrum of branding than your positioning strategy. You need to take the time to define a position to give your audience a reason to choose your brand. If you haven’t done that for your brand then you are not branding because for that reason what’s your marketing all about? You’re spending money on marketing, wasting all of this time, energy, and effort marketing a business without a reason for your audience to look towards you. I can’t stress this enough. Your positioning strategy is critical when it comes to your brand and your brand strategy. Take your time to understand your audience and give them a reason to turn towards your brand.
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