What is marketing positioning?

Why is marketing positioning important?

Positioning: what's it all about?

Marketing positioning allows you to give your product or service a distinctive credible and coherent position within a market. The strategy you define and implement enables you to recognize your brand in the eyes of your customers.

Its aim is to highlight your brand, products or services so that they stand out from the crowd. stand out from the competition with your customers. A well thought-out positioning strategy ensures that you add value to the existing market. 

With so much competition, you need to determine your company's positioning in order to stand out from the crowd. make an impression consumers. This makes it easier for you to win market share.

To sum up, marketing positioning is a simple and useful tool, an essential reflection that you need to have before taking action.

It's only after you've defined your marketing positioning that you can define a communication strategy. The latter will tell you which actions to prioritize and which means of communication to use to communicate with your target.

The benefits of good marketing positioning

There are many advantages to defining the right marketing positioning, both for your company and for your future customers.

The benefits of marketing positioning for your company :

• Clearly establish your place in the market and identify the target audience most likely to buy your services or products.
• Maintain a consistent and transparent approach to marketing and related business issues
• Define an appropriate price that takes into account your audience and your brand image
• Increase conversions and loyalty by resonating with existing and potential customers
• Focus your efforts on the right audiences and the most effective marketing tactics
• Create a better environment for analyzing the success of existing strategies

For the customer, this means they can quickly identify whether the product or service is right for them. Over the long term, they're more likely to establish a solid relationship with a brand whose positioning and communication appeal directly to the buyer.

How do you develop a marketing positioning strategy?

The basics of marketing positioning

Start by researching and segmenting your market before defining your company's positioning. Targeting your market enables you to define a sound strategy and establish a credible position within it.

Good positioning is defined by your ability to make it simple, legible and relevant in the minds of consumers.

Your value proposition must add an extra dimension to the existing market, while at the same time being distinctive, attractive and relevant. We speak of :

• Product identification
• Differentiating your offer
  

The better you respect these two elements, the more quickly consumers will identify and understand your offer. If your positioning is clearly identifiable, they'll be able to start thinking about whether or not you're relevant to them.

Then there's your ability to offer a different approach to the major competition, which manages to win over consumers.

Represent your position using a perceptual map

Who are your competitors? That's the question you absolutely must ask yourself. In order to implement a differentiation strategy, you must first identify and analyze your competitors. 

The next step is to place your company, its products and services, and your competitors on a map. positioning mapping. This will enable you to find a unique positioning and thus define your competitive advantage.

Here are the right questions to ask yourself effective marketing positioning :

• What position do you want to occupy in your market?
• How do you reach your goal? What's the deadline?
• Do you have the means to achieve your goal?
• What marketing and sales strategy should you implement?
• Is your objective consistent with your company's overall strategy?

You can also position yourself on the values you wish to defend. This positioning choice is less focused on a product or service promise, but can still be a real means of differentiation.

In summary, the perceptual map allows you to :

• Visualize competitors' positioning
• Determine your company's current positioning
• Identify market opportunities
• Define or redefine the company's desired positioning

Understanding your brand positioning

Understanding your market

You need to analyze the strengths of direct competitors, i.e. companies offering a product or service identical to yours. Do the same with indirect competitors, i.e. companies offering a different product or service but meeting the same need: reputation, accessibility, sales area, range of products, prices, etc....

To know your market, you also need to understand how it works. These elements can influence not only your sales, but also important strategic choices. Here's a series of questions to help you understand your market

• What are the best times to buy the product or service?
• Is the activity of the target clientele defined by a specific calendar, schedule or timetable?
• Is the demand one-off, accidental, periodic, seasonal or continuous?
• Are purchases scheduled, random or urgent?
• Where to locate the company?
• Is it better to locate close to sources of supply or close to customers?
• Is the physical location (if necessary) well placed? How do other shops on the street function?

Understanding your target

Knowing your target customers is extremely important. After all, it's their market perception which is at the heart of our positioning strategy.

Don't try to please everyone, or you'll become a popular supplier. This vision is only interesting if you offer a product or service that is a necessity. If this is not the case, we strongly recommend that you don't use this strategy.

That's why, since the beginning of this article, we've been stressing the importance of identifying a specific market segment in order to become the best vendor or service provider in that market.

Do you want to target teenagers, adults or seniors? Should this audience be connected, hip, active, travelers, families, party-goers, etc.? Once you've identified the profile of your prospectsyou must understand their behavior and the best way to attract them.

Types of marketing positioning

Marketing positioning on product quality

Your brand focuses on style and luxury, and therefore a more exclusive positioning. With this marketing positioning strategy, consumers will pay a higher price for the exclusivity and emotional response that association with your brand can bring. Your offer includes very high-end products with high-quality materials (e.g. Louis Vuitton, Porsche, etc.).

Marketing positioning on product pricing

In this positioning example, your brand asserts itself by proposing products that offer the same advantages as competing products, but with a different positioning. reduced price. As a result, positioning and communication are strongly focused on this. The terms "cheap", "best price" and "unbeatable" are frequently used.

Marketing positioning on product applications

With this positioning, you focus on marketing a specific function or use of the product. This may involve using it in a certain situation or scenario.

Marketing positioning on product benefits

Your brand emphasizes the specific characteristics of your products. These may offer a higher level of value than your competitors. You associate your brand or service with certain characteristics. specific benefits that provide real advantage to your customers and meets a (potential) market need.

Marketing positioning on product superiority

This strategy is more aggressive than the others. The principle is compare directly your brand to your competitors, highlighting the reasons why you're better than the others. This is not a positioning we recommend using, although in some cases it could prove useful and beneficial to you. First of all, try to position yourself on the types mentioned above.

Examples of marketing positioning

Stella McCartney, a unique and strong positioning

When we talk about responsible luxuryStella McCartney is usually the first brand on the table. To be perfectly fair, the brand practically invented the concept and pushes its commitment further and further as it evolves.
The Stella McCartney brand has renounced the use of leather, fur and PVC in its collections and is constantly looking for new ways to make luxury fashion more sustainable and environmentally friendly.

It's this commitment and values that give Stella McCartney a unique position in its market. Consumers who share its values are attracted to the brand far beyond its aesthetic appeal. This generates sales but they also manage to strongly build loyalty their customers.

The success of the Stella McCartney brand reveals one of the ways to boost your brand positioning: establish and maintain core values to which your target customers adhere and are attached.