What's up brand Builder Stephen Houraghan here at BrandMsterAcademy.com and in this video
you're going to learn the three pillars of brand positioning so you can understand the important
elements that really move the needle when it comes to your Competitive Edge and give your audience
a reason to choose you over your competitors now look I speak a lot about brand strategy and when
it comes to Brand strategy at the center point and without doubt the most important thing is
your brand position your brand position position is what tells your audience what you mean and what
they're going going to get from you versus your competitors and the term was coined by Al re and
Jack trout in their book positioning the battle for your mind and really that's what positioning
is all about it's not a place somewhere it's not a physical place it's a position in the mind of
your audience that you're battling for they will ultimately position your brand in their
mind as they will your competitors and based on that positioning they'll form an opinion
as to who the best player is for them and that will ultimately influence their buying decision
so let's pull back the curtain a little bit and dive a little bit deeper into each one of those
pillars so first up is your audience now when I say that you need to understand your audience
yes you do need to understand your demographics and your psychographics so your demographics are
the circumstances of your audience so you know are they married what car do they drive what
job do they do what kind of income do they have these are the circumstances in their lives that
will give you a bit of a picture as to what their life is like then you have the psychographics on
the other hand these are the behaviors of your audience these are the things that they do on
the weekend the things they do for fun you know do they practice some kind of sport or do they go out
and socialize with their friends what do they do on the weekend with their partner these will give
you a bit of an insight as to what they're like as people but the demographics and the psychographics
they're really just the starting point this is the tip of the iceberg really or the silhouette
of the person you don't really have the detail yet the detail is filled in with the specific
emotions that they go through the specific fears and desires they have so what objectives are they
trying to achieve and what's standing in their way of achieving those objectives what are they
trying to do you know what is their goal and what are they trying to avoid or what are they
trying to get around in order to achieve that goal chances are if they're in the market looking for
some kind of a solution they have some kind of a problem that's standing in their way so knowing
exactly what that problem is and how that's affecting them emotionally will give you that
Insight that you need to really connect with who they are the next pillar are your competitors now
competitive analysis is a really important part of brand strategy because essentially you're
looking into the market landscape and you're understanding who your opponents are you're
understanding what their strengths are what their weaknesses are what they're offering to
your audience and what your audience likes and dislikes about what they're offering and it's
really in the dislikes and the gaps that they're leaving the unmet needs of your audience where the
the opportunities for you to go in and fill that Gap lie so in order to understand your competitor
and to do effective competitive anal is you really need to become uh a member of the the market you
really need to become a potential customer of that of those competitors and you know really
go through their customer Journey go through their brand experience and really understand what it is
they're doing with their audience what they're saying to them how they're positioning how are
they speaking to them what kind of personality are they using what kind of offers are they putting
in front of their audience and when you really understand your competitors at this level from
this amount of detail from this granular detail that's when you're really going to start to find
the insights as to what they're not doing so well or where they're leaving gaps or you know
what customers are not really happy about or what they want more of now this is a very very creative
process and I'll get into that in the next pillar but really understanding the competitive landscape
gives you that map essentially to know where your competitors are sitting where their strengths are
and where the opportunities lie for your brand in your positioning strategy and then of course
you have your differentiation strategy now this is really the center point of what you're doing
when you build a brand you're building a brand to communicate your business to your audience
and to give your audience a reason to choose you over your competitors that's what branding
is all about that's why businesses build or attempt to build a brand to influence
those buying decisions of the audience and nothing influences buying decisions more than an effective
differentiation strategy and a Competitive Edge this is why you're different to your competitors
and within that difference is the value that you're going to give to them that they're not
going to get with the rest now in order to find your differentiation strategy as I said before
you need to understand your audience you need to understand your competitors those first two
pillars is really just about understanding and gaining insights and you take those insights
into your differentiation strategy process to really find that difference in the market now
this is not easy how many articles or videos have you seen out there about finding your Competitive
Edge or you know being different in the market it's all well and good to say it but the process
is pretty difficult when you look into the market I don't care what Market you're in there are a lot
of players in every single market and they're all all vying for that attention they're all
vying for the opportunity to do business with your potential customers and that's who you're
playing against that's who your opponent is in the market so really having those first two
pillars nailed down and having as many insights as possible to bring into the differentiation
strategy process will give you what you need to find your unique difference in the market and
then it's about developing that unique difference out into a unique brand experience so that's what
you can talk about with your audience that's what you can say is the reason that they should choose
you over the rest and at the end of the day if you have a Competitive Edge in the market if you
truly have something unique or a a unique way that you speak to your audience a unique way that you
connect with your audience and you're not simply going into the market and making up the numbers
and blending in with everybody else doing the exact same thing that's when you start to earn
the attention of your audience they start to look towards you instead of your competitors because
you're doing something different and that's what's gaining their attention and that's what's
ultimately going to tell them where they're going to get the value from you so the differentiation
strategy when it comes to building a brand is without doubt the most important task in the whole
spectrum of branding so now you know the three pillars how do you bring all of those together
to go through that process and really develop out an effective positioning strategy well we're going
to dive into three key characteristics that you need to make that happen first up is effective
research now the research phase of positioning applies to both your audience and your competitors
and really this is about painting that landscape painting the landscape of the people who are in
the market looking for Solutions and painting the landscape of the competitors or the businesses or
the brands who are already in the market serving that audience the deeper you dive
into this process the more insights you're going to find and you can do this through
Gorilla research so the information that's freely available online whether it's through social media
profiles of your competitors and you know the social media profiles of their followers your
potential customers you can also find white papers and reports freely available online research
reports that are available online or you can use paid software as well that will give you those
details that will give you those demographics and psychographics and behaviors of people in
the market and competitors in the market as well so that phase is really all about understanding
the competitive landscape understanding who your audience is understanding who your competitors
are and when you do that detailed analysis that's where you find the insights now this is the reason
that you're doing all of this research you're not strategizing during the research phase or trying
to find the perfect position you're simply trying to understand the market trying to understand that
landscape of your audience trying to understand that landscape of your competitors and what you're
really looking for are those insights the little nuggets of gold that are in every single Market
which represent opportunities for you to go in and do something fresh and new so insights is
what you're trying to achieve from all of that research so keep that top of Mind as you're
looking at who your audience is as you're looking at your competitors and as you're looking at the
entire market and finally we have creativity now when you think of branding it's quite possible
that you think of logos and visual identities and from that perspective to think that branding is
a creative process you'd be absolutely right but the creative process goes beyond just the
designs and the visuals it goes into positioning the strategy itself is a creative process that
you go through trying to find a differentiation strategy a unique position a Competitive Edge
all of these things things are not sitting out in the open it really takes creativity
and the more insights you're working with the more opportunities you have to dig deep and
see if you can develop that out into an effective positioning strategy now there are many different
ways that you can do this going out into the market and finding inspiration from different
brands in different markets or using associations there's a great book by ulie Apple bomb called
the brand positioning workbook if you haven't read it I recommend that you check it out in our brand
Master Secrets program we dive deep into these creative processes as well but ultimately you're
trying to find inspiration and you're trying to take those insights that you've found earlier on
to find something that's unique in the market and yes it is hard but every single Market has
those nuggets of gold and has those opportunities for a new brand to go in and do something new now
look if effective positioning was easy every sing single brand would do it but they don't
all you have to do is look at the statistics of small businesses coming into the market and most
of those small businesses don't know too much about brand positioning they spend their budget
on their designs and their visuals and maybe some Facebook ads but they really don't take the time
to understand who Their audience is who their competitors are and what their differentiation
strategy is going to be they are the three pillars of positioning they are the center point of brand
strategy and they are the reasons that your audience will choose you of your competitors
now if you want to dive deeper into brand strategy then this video here will help you out but before
you click it if you want to become a master of brand make sure you hit the like And subscribe
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until next time brand like a master and I'll see you in the next [Music] video [Music]