Stephen Houraghan here of BrandMasterAcademy.com and in this video I want to talk to you
about positioning specifically the unlimited powerful advantages that you
have by positioning your brand effectively.
now to be honest the amount of advantages that you have by positioning your brand are endless
but my goal in this video is to show you just how significant brand positioning
is within your brand strategy if you execute your brand positioning strategy
well then you have countless and I mean countless of advantages because
your positioning strategy is fundamental and it shapes the rest of the entire
brand it's a cornerstone of your entire brand strategy and everything else from
within your brand is developed from that positioning strategy so let's dive into
a few of the most powerful advantages that positioning your brand will give
you the first advantage is laser-like focus on who you're actually serving so
when you position your brand you stand back and you look at the market landscape
and you get to know your competitors and you get to know your
audience but getting to know your audience goes deep and you get to know
who they are what they like what they dislike what their personality is like
the challenges they go through the pain points they have what emotions they're
going through and all of this detail allows you to focus in on exactly who
they are through your communication through your products through your
services so you're focusing on them you're focusing on what they need and
you're delivering what they need through your products through your services
through your messaging so it resonates your messaging resonates with them your
services your products resonate with them and you can have a much more
intimate relationship with that target audience advantage number two is
differentiation from the competition now when you step back and you look at
positioning strategy the end goal certainly the core end goal of
positioning is to differentiate yourself from your competitors so the
differentiation strategy the positioning strategy involves looking
exactly at what your competitors do and specifically what they don't do so you
can see those gaps and when you do see those gaps you're able
to hone in on those potentially develop a differentiation strategy around those
and once you've developed a differentiation strategy and you've
shown your audience why you're different from your competitors that then gives
your audience a reason to turn their heads and look away from your
competitors towards your brand and if your differentiation strategy is
compelling enough if what you offer is different and valuable enough then that
will sit in the mind of your audience and potentially help you to carve out a
new position for your brand so being able to differentiate yourself from your
competitors is a core advantage of positioning your brand
now the third advantage to an effective positioning strategy is being able to
focus in on the problems that you solve now if you look at brands that aren't
effectively positioned and this will be probably about 70% of the brands out
there because most brands don't take the time to position themselves they go out
into the market and they try to be all things to everybody and an example of
this would be a one-stop shop and if you look at those types of brands you can
see that their communication is not targeted effectively they're not
speaking directly to the pain points because they're too busy telling their
audience that they can fix every problem whereas a brand that's more effectively
positioned can focus in on very very specific problems that their audience is
having they can understand those problems in a lot more detail they can
refine the communication they can refine the stories so that they resonate with
their audience on a much more intimate level they can then go on and refine
their products refine their services refine their entire solution so that
their brand evolves around their audience so that is a huge advantage to
brands that position themselves effectively is they can speak directly
to those challenges and to those problems that their audience has now the
fourth advantage of brand positioning strategy is increased memorability or
increased brand awareness now when you take the time to position your brand
you're gonna go in and you're gonna find yourself a unique differentiator and
this is gonna be the reason that you give your audience to remember you if
you're able to build an effective communication strategy
around that differentiator and give them a reason around the value of that
differentiator to remember your brand then you're gonna be in the mix when it
comes to that buying decision process and if you're in the mix during the
buying decision process and you're in consideration that's where the rubber
meets the road in terms of branding that is what you're aiming for with your
positioning strategy with your tagline with your communication you want them to
remember your brand you want them to remember the value that you offer
through your differentiation strategy and if you do if you're able to pull
that off if they do remember you then that increased memorability that
increased brand awareness will grow over time and that will give you a huge
advantage in the marketplace advantage number five of brand positioning
strategy is brand storytelling and messaging now if you don't define your
brand position in the market then you're not going to be able to build effective
stories that will resonate with your audience on the other hand if you have
taken the time and you've got a well refined positioning strategy and you
understand who your audience is and you know their day-to-day lives what do they
do on a day-to-day basis what are their lives like what are the problems not
just that you solve but the problems that they have in and around your
solution when you understand that and you understand you know what their life
is like on an intimate level then you can start to build stories that are
going to resonate a lot more effectively and when you're able to do that when
you're able to build stories that speak to who the audience is then they're
gonna think to themselves wow this brand gets me and that's when you're gonna
resonate with them and that's when you're gonna make that human connection
human connection is what your brand should aim for because it's not in the
mind that the decision is made it's in the heart so if you're able to sit in
there if you're able to tell stories about your brand which really are
stories about your audience and the challenges that they have then you're
gonna resonate with them and you're gonna connect on a human level and if
you do that that's a massive massive advantage in the marketplace advantage
number six is justified pricing strategies now when you understand what
it is that you do differently in the marketplace when compared to your
competitors then whatever pricing strategy you define for your brand and
for your products is easily justifiable because you can
talk to that difference and you can talk to the value of that difference but if
you go into the marketplace and you haven't effectively positioned your
brand and you're asked to justify the price difference it becomes a lot more
difficult to justify that price you can't clearly articulate the difference
that you offer in the marketplace and the value of that difference therefore
talking to a pricing strategy and justifying a pricing strategy becomes a
lot more difficult so it's the value in the difference that you offer from your
competitors that allows you to speak to a pricing strategy and that allows you
to determine what pricing strategy is right for your brand and you can deliver
that with conviction advantage number seven is clarity and vision for your
brand direction now I did say earlier the positioning strategy is the bedrock
and the foundation of the entire brand and everything else developed within the
brand stems from your positioning strategy and this is a perfect example
of that your brand vision projects what your brand will look like in the future
maybe five maybe ten years and if you have a clear idea of what your positioning
strategy is if you've honed in on that then when you project your brand into
the future you can take your position into account and you can also safeguard
that position you can put in place plans to protect your position long term so
you stay ahead of the competition so this is a perfect example of how the
rest of your brand stems from your positioning strategy and if you have
clarity of vision then you're able to make decisions with a lot more clarity
as well and you're able to get a very good understanding of what you want your
brand to look like in the future advantage number eight is a greater
understanding of your audience's challenges now I did speak earlier about
understanding the problems that your audience has but here we're going a
little deeper on this and what we're trying to do is to understand the
audience on an intimate level you can reach out to your audience you can talk
to them you can ask them about your challenges and it's when you understand
those challenges and this is the advantage here when you understand
those challenges on a much more intimate level you're able to empathize with them
and if you're able to show that empathy they're gonna feel understood and if
they feel understood that's when they're gonna make that human
connection with you that's when they're gonna think to themselves you know this
brand they really get me they really understand me and focusing in on
an understanding of those challenges showing that understanding will really
help to build that connection will really help to show your brand as more
than just a corporation and to help build those human connections through
emotion so understanding those challenges on an intimate level so you
can shape your communication and show a lot more empathy will really give you an
advantage when building those human relationships advantage number nine is
increased relevancy within your niche now I've spoken to this before and it's
nothing new here if you go out into the marketplace and you try to be all things
to everybody effectively you haven't positioned your brand then
you're not gonna resonate with anybody you're not gonna speak to anybody
nobody's gonna think to themselves wow this brand gets me this brand is talking
to exactly what I want to hear your communication is going to be unfocused
because you don't have that clarity now I know a lot of entrepreneurs struggle
with this because when I speak to entrepreneurs about positioning for the
first time and I suggest to them that we need to be more relevant to a specific
audience their first thought is towards the audience that they're turning their
backs on they think of all of that business that they're leaving on the
table and all of those potential clients and they really struggle with that idea
but it's not until a business niches itself down does it become more relevant
then they can tailor their communication to speak directly to what their audience
is looking for and an example of this would be a digital marketing agency
versus Facebook marketing agency now if somebody is looking for help with
Facebook ads and they go out into the marketplace and they come across a
digital marketing agency who's talking about traffic and SEO and display
advertising in and amongst social media advertising and Facebook ads then their
messaging is going to be less tailored when their traffic jumps onto their
website and they see all of these different messages and they're looking
specifically for Facebook ads the vast majority of the messages
that they're gonna read is not gonna be tailored towards them if on the other
hand they come across a Facebook marketing agency and the Facebook
marketing agency is all about their Facebook ads and they talk specifically
about the pain points around Facebook ads about setting up campaigns about
setting up the right audiences and how to increase click-through rates
and everything in and around Facebook ads well then they're gonna resonate a
lot deeper with their audience they're gonna be a lot more relevant to them and
then they're gonna be able to talk a lot more specifically about specialization
about their expertise in the field and that's just gonna make them a lot more
relevant so if you're able to position yourself effectively then you're gonna
be able to talk to that expertise you're gonna be a lot more relevant and you're
gonna mean a lot more to that specific audience advantage number 10 is better
decision-making when you've positioned your brand and you know what that
position is you've got an intimate understanding of your audience and their
pain points then you become obsessed about who your audience is you become
obsessed about their challenges and about protecting that position in the
marketplace so all of the decisions that you make are a lot more focused and
you've become a lot more creative with those decisions as well because you take
a step back and you start thinking outside the box in terms of the
challenges that your audience is going through and how you can better
serve those challenges so your decision-making processes become a lot
more refined because everything comes back to the position that you hold in
the marketplace about serving your audience and about protecting that
position so effective decision-making creative decision-making is a
huge advantage to having a strong position in the marketplace now although
these are 10 of the most powerful advantages of positioning your brand
this is just a drop in the ocean really the list goes on and on and on and on
and on because as I've said before the positioning strategy is the foundation
of your entire brand strategy everything else you develop within your brand
strategy stems from the position you take in the market so everything from
the tone of voice that you have the language your personality the archetypes
the messaging strategy your storytelling
your brand identity system the colour palette the typography I could go on and
on and on if every single one of these are developed from your positioning
strategy based on who your audience is what they like their pain points their
challenges what their desires are then every single element of your brand
strategy becomes an advantage so again I can't stress how important your
positioning strategy is and how it influences everything within your entire
brand strategy but I'd love to know from you what are your favorite examples of
brand positioning or what are your biggest challenges in and around
positioning your brand or developing a brand positioning strategy I'd love to
know if you could reach out to me in the comments if you've got any questions at
all around brand positioning strategy let me know in the comments as well I'll
do my best to answer all of those questions if you like this video if it
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will see you in the next one!