Positioning Your Company for Differentiation

Brand Strategy Series

Often when you feel like it’s time to refresh your identity, your website, or any other marketing material it’s because your positioning needs to be elevated in a way that resonates with your audience. This happens for a number of reasons:

• Your business or product has changed
• Your competition has developed a positioning that has made yours either outdated or sub-par
• Your company has never developed a Brand Strategy or Positioning

If you’ve been involved in an unfocused logo/identity or website project, it’s likely because the team doesn’t have access to the appropriate Brand Strategy toolbox.

This is a critical aspect of our work, and requisite to building a differentiated and successful brand presence for organizations like yours.

Our work in positioning is a primary focus of our Brand Strategy process. Brand Identity will follow Brand Strategy. In this series though, we want to focus on the foundational elements that are less understood than an identity system.

What Defines Good Positioning?

A well-positioned company is a self-aware company. You know intimately the aspects of your Brand Strategy, and have the necessary tools to execute impactful marketing with those tools.

A well-positioned company is not afraid of their competition. You understand what makes you unique in the market. This is easily seen in the auto industry. A Lexus and a Subaru are both nice cars, but they are important in their own way to their different audiences, and both companies have crafted their brand to focus on those personas.

Remember:
“When you try to be all things to all people,
you become nothing to no one.”

Sometimes positioning is public, and sometimes it drives your creative headlines. Positioning can be thought of as your “brand promise”. It’s a straightforward sentence that encompasses who you are, what you do, and why.

Positioning vs. Ad Campaign

I’m going to draw a line in the sand: The snarky advertisement that gets attention and wins awards for ad agencies ain’t good positioning. That’s an ad campaign. Sometimes snark and cleverness are useful and sometimes not, but even Big Ass Fans (the snarkiest name in the business) has a straightforward positioning: “Comfort Solutions For Your Home or Business”.

Any major advertising expense needs to have a brand strategy that has been well executed as its foundation.

How Do We Get There?

Brand Strategy is the work necessary to define your place in the market. This work typically focuses on:

• Your product or service offerings and their value
• Your target audience, optimally turned into Personas, defining their motivations
• Your competitive landscape, and how you differentiate yourself
• Your brand architecture, especially if you have multiple brands or confusing offerings
• Your positioning, uncovering your unique value proposition(s) and authentic brand attributes
• A Brand Concept, revealing the inner essence of your brand, and a guiding light for ongoing branding and marketing efforts

We’ve refined and codified our Brand Strategy process to be a leading focus of our client projects. Our Brand Strategy projects are a linear process, and always the first phase in any branding work that we produce. I’m not exaggerating when I say this work is critical to your ongoing success in achieving your marketing goals.

Successful brands are value-true, carried forward by stakeholders, and align perfectly with the products and services of the audience they serve.

In this Brand Strategy series, we will continue to break down the components of our process to help you understand how to build a brand presence that is the perfect fit for your organization.

Reach out to VIA today to learn more about our branding approach and how we can help you reach your business goals.

Other Brand Strategy Series Posts:

• Why Your Brand Deserves a Concept
• Roadmapping Your Strategic Initiatives
• Branding Behind the Scenes