what's up brand builders Stephen Houraghan here at BrandMasterAcademy.com and in this
video you're going to learn what a competitive position is with a legendary brand example to
demonstrate so you can understand how brands define a competitive advantage to ultimately
influence the decisions of their customers now the term strategic competitive positioning
sounds like a complex term on the face of it to describe a really complex topic and
to make matters even more confusing the term competitive positioning is used interchangeably
with countless other terms that all mean more or less the same thing all hair splitting aside
the reality is competitive positioning is not complex and once you understand exactly what it
is and how to define it you can maneuver your brand into a position of competitive advantage
and ultimately strength and in this video we're simplifying positioning and showing you the steps
that you need in your own strategic process so you can define a competitive advantage for your brand
so what exactly is competitive positioning well the term competitive position often throws people
off due to the fact that it sounds like a complex topic as i've mentioned before many entrepreneurs
business leaders and even brand builders put it on the long finger or avoid it all together
the reality is the topic itself is really very simple though the consequences of skipping this
step when building a brand are not so let's start by clearing away some of the fog now
no doubt you've heard some of these terms before and they all more or less mean the same thing that
is competitive positioning positioning strategy brand positioning differentiation strategy market
position key differentiator more often than not if you hear these words they're referring to the same
thing which the father of mother marketing philip kotler wants to find as the act of designing
the company's offering and image to occupy a distinctive place in the mind of the target market
to simplify this further your competitive position is why your audience would choose your brand
over your competitors so as you can see the term competitive advantage or competitive positioning
it's not that complex at all now back in 1980 a book written by al reese and jack trout called
positioning a battle for your mind shook up the marketing world it framed the idea that
brands weren't built in some physical marketplace brands were built in the minds of the audience the
competitive position that you aim to win for your brand therefore is in the mind of your audience
and it's there that you must plant the seed and shape the perceptions so before you jump into
defining a competitive position you must first understand the mind in which it will live in
now another critical consideration before defining a position for your brand is who else is playing
in the market that you're entering the mind of your audience has already positioned multiple
other competing brands in their mind based on how they perceive those brands understanding
the mind of your audience you want to appeal to is critical but if you enter the market offering the
same as your competitors then essentially you're asking them to place your brand in the same place
in their mind as your competitors now this is the opposite of what effective positioning is
and it brings into context the theme of all reese and jack trout's book staking a claim
for a unique position that's not already occupied by a competitor is how you win the battle of the
mind now a competitive positioning map is a visual positioning tool that compares brands products or
services now this comparison uses a combination of two variables that consumers consider when making
their buying decision so it's worth noting that this is another example of a term that's widely
used interchangeably with other terms including perceptual maps market mapping positioning matrix
perceptual matrix so how does market mapping actually work well it's very simple you take
two variables that your audience would consider before making a decision to buy and then you place
the extremes of each of those two on a dimensional x-axis you then place the competitors who offer
the same product or service on the map based on how they're perceived in the market pertaining to
these variables so let's look at a quick example of this let's say you're building a brand that
produces women's moisturizer you would think of two variables your audience would consider before
making a purchase now these variables would be based on who the audience is their personality
type and their desires but two variables that may influence their purchasing decision could be
naturalness or effectiveness or naturalness and effectiveness and we would then place the
extremes of each of these variables at opposing ends of the dimensions and then plot the position
of each of the competitors based on how they're perceived in the market leaving us with something
like this so why use a perceptual map or a positioning map well the advantage of mapping
your position is that it makes it easy to identify gaps in the market through visual representation
so after researching your audience and identifying their wants and their desires and then researching
your competitors to identify their strengths and weaknesses you can then plot that information
the positioning map should then provide a visual representation of the market landscape relating to
the variable selected with enough research market mapping can really help you discover opportunities
that you may not have otherwise seen so if you're about to start on a new project for your own brand
or a client of yours then sit down and think about the variables that you could use what exactly
would your customer want from a product or a service now of course every customer is
different and every market is different so really understanding who the audience is
who the personality is behind this group of people is really important in defining
what the most effective variables would be to select for your positioning map then identifying
where the gaps are and where the opportunities lie and then extracting those to develop a creative
and effective competitive advantage for your brand now i'm going to leave another video
up here that will help you dive deeper into brand strategy but if you want to become a
master of brand make sure you hit the like and subscribe and i'll see you in the next video