What's up brandt builder Stephen Houraghan here at BrandMasterAcademy.com and in this video you're
going to learn eight brand positioning principles for brand strategists so you can develop a brand
that's actually worth your marketing efforts and give your audience a reason to turn their heads
now if you're new to the channel and you want to build brands that go beyond those visuals using
strategy psychology and creative thinking then you're in the right place hit that subscribe
button and the notification bell if you want to fast track your results make sure you grab the
pro brand strategy blueprint it's a free download the link is in the description now i have heard
and i've probably used 100 different ways to define branding now i'm not quite sure why it's
such an enigma and there are so many different variations and different definitions maybe it's
because branding means different things to different people maybe it's because branding
has evolved as a subset of marketing into this overarching discipline i'm not really sure why
there is confusion why there are so many different ideas and opinions and philosophies about branding
but what i am absolutely 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 so without a shadow of a debt the most 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 now we live in a world where we have maybe
10 to 100 different options for a given product or a given 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 certain part of the brain now that is based on our own individual experiences
but it's also based on how the brand attempts to position itself what position they want to own
in our mind and how they shape their subsequent messaging to develop that image in our mind so
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 when developing your messaging is to understand
the image that you want to own in their mind and allow your position and your messaging to shape
that image so 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 principle number
one identify the who now your brand exists for one reason and for one reason only and that is
to serve your audience yes your brand will generate a revenue but that is a byproduct of
serving your audience your principal primary goal is to serve your audience and to be there to give
them what they need now 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 exactly where they're coming from where they're going to what they're feeling
what their goals are what their aspirations are what challenges they're coming across if you know
all of that then you can develop your position you can develop your product your service you
can develop your solution to meet their needs and you can also use it to shape your messaging
to own a specific image in their mind so it's not just the image that you need to own in their mind
it's the right image for the right mind principle number two identify the alternatives now your
audience will have a need they'll have a want and there will already be brands in the market
serving those needs and each and every one of those brands will have their own
individual reason as to why their audience should choose them so you need to really understand that
landscape you need to understand what players 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
different twist or a differentiation strategy that you can use to to separate yourself
from all of those other alternatives so it's really important that you identify who is playing
within the market landscape what options your audience already has so you can identify those
gaps and those opportunities principle number three define your difference now i can't stress
this enough and i'm not going to sugarcoat 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 positions are taken and you're left sitting
on the sidelines but it really does take a bit of time care attention finesse and a creative mind
to unlock an effective differentiation strategy but you really need to give
your differentiation strategy that time care and attention so you can find something that
is compelling that you can give your audience as a reason to choose your brand over your competitors
principle number four focus your products now you might have one product or you might have a hundred
products but once you have your differentiation strategy there and you know what you wanna mean to
your audience then you can use that as a guiding principle when developing out your products and
if you think about apple back in 1997 steve jobs came back in 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 absolutely crazy we're
cutting 70 percent 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 weren't aligned with that meaning so
take that into your own brand when developing out your product to make sure that your products
are focused on that differentiation strategy principle number five determine your price now
the price that we set for our products and the price point that we set for our brand
has an influencing factor on where our audience are 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 or budget car brands we associate them with a low price now that is
a very very basic example of this but price is a very important consideration when it comes to your
differentiation strategy when it comes to that position that you want to own in the mind of your
audience so really take the time to consider what price that you're going to place in the market and
what that means in terms of the position that you want to own compared to your competitors
principle number six identify your place now this seems like a bit of a no-brainer when i talk about
place i'm talking about your location are you physical are you digital are you both now 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 now if you think
about what the kova 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 they were forced to evolve
and some of those businesses have really achieved a higher level based on the forced evolution that
they've had to go through so you know these businesses might not have even considered
this approach before the covet pandemic so it really goes to show that your place is still
a very very important consideration and you need to take the time to think about it strategically
so really think about the business that you want to build think about the audience that you want to
serve and where you want to be for them principle number seven define your experience now 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 and 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 now most brands don't do this they don't take the time to understand all of those
steps that their audience takes on the customer journey and then develop an experience to give
them that experience so that they can own that position in the mind of their audience but if you
take the time to do that you have an edge of your competitors so really understand the experience
that you want to have that you want your audience to have so that that can add to the position that
you want to own in their mind and principle number eight distill your position now 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 so i'm talking here about your tagline now some of
the world's biggest brands are in a very very privileged position and they've chosen taglines
that are able to represent an idea so i'll give you an example here nike have the tagline
just do it now this doesn't really speak to the products that they sell it doesn't really speak to
the running shoes that they were born from phil knight developed blue ribbon way back when back
in 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 as
i said those sorts of taglines those big idea taglines are really reserved for the big end of
town and for those who have high brand awareness but when it comes to developing your own 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 so take the time to really define the position that you want to own
in their mind and then distill that position down into an effective tagline now i've said it before
and i'll say it again 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 i don't
know what you're doing but you're not branding you really really need to give your audience a
reason because without that reason what's your marketing all about you're spending money on
marketing you're wasting all of this time energy and effort marketing a business without a reason
for your audience to look towards you so again i can't stress this enough your positioning strategy
is absolutely critical when it comes to your brand and your brand strategy so take the time
to develop it out take the time to understand your audience what they want what they need and what
they're feeling and then give them a reason to turn towards your brand but i would love to hear
from you i would love to hear your experience about defining positions for the brands that
you're building as i've said before it is one of the most difficult tasks in the whole spectrum
of branding is that your experience as well or do you have a technique that is really effective in
unlocking a positioning strategy for the brands that you're building already you have challenges
when it comes to defining that position i'd love to hear from you if you like this video please
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of resources on there including the pro brand strategy blueprint as i mentioned earlier it's
free you can just download it and get going with brand strategy but as i said i'd love to hand it
back over to you i'd love to hear from you about your challenges about your experiences i'll do my
best to answer all of those until next time brian like a master and i'll see you in the next video