Stephen Houraghan at BrandMasterAcademy.com and in this video I want to talk to you about brand
positioning what is it and what are the three keys that you need to build an effective brand
element in your entire brand strategy and the reason that it's so important is that
everything else within your brand strategy flows from your brand position so what is your position
uh what's it all about what are we trying to do with our brand position well when you come
to the market with a product or a service you're coming into a marketplace full of your competitors
what you're trying to do is you're trying to stand out and tell your audience why they should
remember your brand what is it that you do differently from all the other competitors in
the marketplace and why should they listen to you and to your brand so what we're trying to do with
your positioning strategy is we're trying to place your brand in the mind of your audience as to why
you stand out why you're different why they should remember you what do you give to your audience
that's better than the rest of the competition and that's why brand positioning is so important
because you can come to the marketplace with any product or any service but if you don't tell your
audience why they should remember you they're not going to know why they should and they're
not going to place you in the right position within their mind because you haven't explained
to them the difference that you offer in the marketplace so your positioning strategy in
your brand position is all about defining what you do differently to your competitors why your
audience should remember you and then go about building a strategy and a communication strategy
to communicate that difference to your audience so they remember your brand now this guy is
called philip cutler and he's thought of as the father of modern marketing and cutler has defined
positioning as the act of designing a company's offering an image to occupy a distinctive place
in the mind of your target market now the offer he's referring to is the thing that
you do differently from your competitors and the image that he's referring to is the way in which
you communicate that difference to your audience and collectively those two things your offer
and your image represent the idea which is exactly how you want your brand to be perceived in the
market what is that idea what do you want your audience to remember about your brand
and encapsulating that idea and placing it into their mind is what effective positioning is all
about now the first key to developing an effective brand positioning strategy
is to make it as easy as possible for your audience to position your brand now that might say
seem a bit strange your audience positioning your brand isn't that the brand that positions
your brand well no this is a common misconception a lot of people think that when you position your
brand in the marketplace that you are going to position your brand in the mind of your audience
when in fact it's your audience that actually positions your brand as a brand what we try to
do is we try to influence how they see how they perceive your brand so that they place it in a
distinct place within their mind now throughout the brand positioning strategy development
we try to identify what place we want to own within our audience's mind then we go about
developing a communication strategy developing out the rest of your brand strategy to make sure that
the messages that we're sending to our audience will give them the best possible chance at
placing our brand in that position that we want to own within their mind so that is a common
misconception about positioning your audience positions your brand in their mind you don't
position your brand you attempt to influence where they position your brand and you do that
through effective communication now the second key to developing an effective brand positioning
strategy is to always keep the end goal in mind as you develop it now what we want as an end goal
is that when our audience comes across our brand whether it's through an advertisement a social
post a piece of content just by seeing our logo whether it's on our packaging or on our website
when they come across our brand whatever the touch point we want them to associate our brand with an
idea now this idea is born within the development of the brand positioning strategy itself we want
to find a differentiator to differentiate our brand from our competitors and we do that through
competitive analysis and by analyzing who our audience is what they want the pain points they
go through and we identify a gap in the market we develop a differentiator around that gap and
then we build an idea around that differentiator if we're able to get our audience to remember
our brand by that idea then we have succeeded in our brand positioning strategy now once you know
what the differentiator is once you know what the big idea is you want to then develop that
communication strategy around that and that's why i said earlier the brand positioning strategy is
one of the most important elements in the entire brand strategy because we now need to develop our
communication around what this big idea is so we're able to plant that idea in the mind of
our audience now one key here when it comes to developing this communication strategy is that
simplicity is key we want to make it as easy as possible for our our audience to remember what
it is that we do differently and what the whole big idea is around our brand so that when they
see our brand when they come across it they don't have to think too hard if we make our audience
think too hard they're never going to remember what it is that we want them to remember and that
idea is not going to sink in so we're not going to stake a claim for that position in their mind
so that's what we want to do we want to keep it as simple as possible and remember that end goal
we're trying to own a position in their mind so that when they see our brand when they come across
our brand they associate us with an idea that we've defined in that positioning strategy the
third key to defining your brand position is that differentiation requires creative thinking
now when you go into the marketplace and you start to analyze your competitors it's not going
to be as easy as looking at and seeing a beautiful patch of grass with flowers on it and sunshine and
sitting on top of the hill that your brand can just plop on top of that your competitors haven't
thought of it's not that easy when it comes to defining a differentiation strategy and defining
a brand position it really does need creative thinking and you need to think outside the box of
what your brand can do differently a lot of your competitors will probably have been in the market
for years and if you're in a really competitive space you're going to have a lot of competitors
all vying for the attention of your audience so defining a differentiation strategy and defining
a gap is about creating a gap it's about thinking outside the box and looking at your audience and
what they need what their pain points are and what you can do differently to create a differentiator
to create a new idea that didn't previously exist so finding your position in the market is not
necessarily about finding your position it's about creating a position for your brand that didn't
previously exist now coming up with an idea is not enough either you can't just think okay well this
sounds like a great idea that's going to be our position that's going to be our differentiator
and that's what we're going to run with there's a lot of things that you need to consider within
your differentiation strategy much in the way a military platoon would need to complete a mission
the commander of that platoon is not just gonna decide okay we need to do this let's go he's
gonna take a step back and he's gonna look at the landscape he's gonna look at the civilians their
location and their movement he's gonna look at the enemy where their place what their strengths
are what the what their weaknesses are and then he's gonna map out a strategy of the best way to
accomplish that mission it's the exact same when it comes to your positioning strategy there are a
lot of elements at play you need to have a look at what those elements are where they're placed
and the best way for you to navigate around those elements so that you can effectively place your
idea within the mind of your audience so before you define what your differentiator is before
you define what your big idea is have a look out into the marketplace have a look at all of those
elements that are out there and strategize your best approach and if you do that successfully if
you do that effectively then your audience will associate your brand with an idea and you've
managed to plant your brand in the position in their mind if you like this video give it a
thumbs up hit the subscribe button and there'll be more videos like that if you've got any questions
pop them in the box and i'll be happy to answer them for you and I will see you in the next video