Stephen Houraghan here at BrandMasterAcademy.com and in this video you're going to learn how to
write an effective brand positioning statement with this proven six step formula now on
the facebook the brand positioning statement seems pretty self-explanatory it's a statement
for your brand position but there is a lot of confusion around the positioning statement
and most of the confusion comes from who the brand positioning statement is intended for
and what its job is what its role is supposed to do so like uh school handyman the brand
positioning statement seems to be dragged in for every task under the sun when it comes to
brand strategy so i want to clear this up want to clear up what the brand positioning statement is
for who it's intended for and what its job is now the first thing i want to do is rule out what the
brand positioning statement is not now there are a lot of elements within a brand strategy and a lot
of statements as well especially in and around the position of the brand and some of these statements
are intended to be customer facing some of them are intended to be internal only so just want to
get down the different statements that the brand positioning statement is confused with
and rule out what it's not and then we can define what it is the brand positioning statement
is not a vision statement now the vision statement is part of the internal brand and
it represents the brand's aspirations and what that future brand is going to look like
it's not the mission statement either that's also part of the internal brand and it represents
the commitments of the brand what the brand is committed to long term
it's not a tagline this is the customer facing distilled message which encapsulates what the
differentiator is what that difference the brand is going to make in the market to their audience
it's not the usp or the unique selling proposition the usp is an internal outline which focuses only
on the differentiator it's not a value proposition either the value proposition focuses on the
functional and emotional benefits of the overall experience of the brand and it's not an elevator
pitch the elevator pitch is a collection of punchy sentences which summarizes what the brand does and
it's designed as an engaging conversation starter now i hope it didn't confuse you there with all
of those statements that certainly wasn't my intention but you will come across these
statements if you are in and around the brand strategy space if you're doing some research
you're going to come across articles that say your brand positioning strategy is one or the same as
any one of these and if you do see an article like that now you know what to do with that article so
the brand positioning statement is not any one of those things the brand positioning statement
is an internal first document it's designed to act as a guide for the leadership team
and the brand builders in developing the rest of the brand which focuses on the position of that
brand it's not meant as a customer facing document which is a fancy way of saying that the customer
shouldn't see this it shouldn't be on your website it shouldn't be on any of your customer facing
branding documentation this is designed as an internal only document and it's designed
to guide the decisions and the actions of the brand leadership team in and around the brand
strategy and the communication strategy so that they go after the position that they've defined
within the brand positioning statement that they want to own in the mind of their audience
so that's the role of the brand positioning statement it's to guide the decisions and actions
of the leadership team in the development of the overall brand and its communication strategy there
are a few key elements to find within the brand positioning strategy and they all come together
within the brand positioning statement and they include who it helps what it helps with
the outcome or the experience the competitive alternative and the point of difference now
i've touched on this briefly but i just want to make a crystal clear you don't just go out and
create your brand positioning statement without having done the work within the brand positioning
strategy now i've got a video on brand positioning strategy i'll put it in the description below so
if you're coming to towards doing your brand positioning statement and you haven't yet
developed your brand positioning strategy we'll go back and have a look at that video first
because the brand positioning statement is a byproduct of all of the work that you do within
the brand positioning strategy which outlines who the audience is who the competitors are and the
difference that you're going to make in the lives of your audience when compared to your competitors
so all of that work and all of the information that comes out from that comes into the brand
positioning statement and you can't develop the round positioning statement until you've done
that leg work the statement is a byproduct of all of that work so make sure you do that first now as
i said the end goal of the brand positioning statement is to gather all of that critical
information from the brand positioning strategy and then formulate it in an easy to understand
statement so the brand leadership team can see clearly what their position is in the market
at all times and make decisions based on that information make decisions about the overall brand
strategy about the communication strategy because they can see clearly from the brand positioning
statement all of the elements that they've taken from the brand positioning strategy and what the
position is that they're trying to own so that's what the brand positioning statement structure
does it takes that information from the brand positioning strategy and structures it in a way
that's easy to understand for the brand leadership team and this is what that structure looks like
we help audience so we're outlining here who we help and defining who the audience is
who challenge or pain point so we're talking about our audience and the challenges and the
pain points that they're going through to achieve or experience key benefit
so we're outlining here what we want our audience to achieve what we want them to experience through
the key benefit that we offer unlike competitive alternative so we're defining who our competition
is and what they're offering to our audience and why we're different our solution unique point of
difference and this is where we outline what that difference is in comparison to our competitors now
to write an effective brand positioning statement does take a little bit of finesse but this is
something that you'll get better at over time the more positioning statements you write the better
you become at them just like anything the more experience you get the more efficient you become
the more streamlined the work becomes but if you follow the framework just outline and you follow
the six step process that i'm going to outline for you right now then you'll be well on your
way to developing an effective brand positioning statement step number one define the position of
your brand now although this work happens before the brand positioning statement is written
the statement shouldn't be written without doing this work so you can't actually go ahead and
do your statement without first defining your brand positioning strategy so you want to first
understand who your audience is and what they want second understand your competitors and what
they do and third identify the gaps and create a unique differentiator step number two you want
to reference your internal brand to make sure that it's aligned so before you write your brand
positioning strategy it is important to ensure that it's written with the internal brand top of
mind now this is the foundation of who the brand is so it should be represented where possible to
ensure that the brand is aligned number three list each brand positioning statement element
so before you begin writing list out each one of the brand positioning statement elements which
are the audience the challenge or the pain point the key benefit the competitive alternative and
the unique point of difference so each of these elements is related to the next and they need
to be closely aligned as they're written to ensure that they integrate well into an overall statement
number four focus on your audience's understanding now although the brand positioning statement is an
internal document and it shouldn't be displayed to the customer it is important that it's written
with the customer as its focus and the reason for this is to ensure that it's not written
with any kind of industry jargon or required industry knowledge in order to understand it
so just remember that this acts as a guide for the development and the management of the rest of the
brand which includes the communication strategy so the simpler it is the clearer the subsequent
communication is going to be number five write a concise statement defining each element
so each of the brand positioning statement elements should be defined into a concise and
easy to understand sentence which leaves no room for misinterpretation if you have a professional
copywriter at your disposal then definitely recommend using them but if you don't then heavily
scrutinize whether or not each and every word is absolutely necessary and if it's not then drop it
number six integrate your sentences with the brand positioning statement formula once your individual
elements are all defined into sentences then it's time to bring them all together into a clear
statement using the brand positioning statement formula and it should look something like this we
help audience who challenge pain point to achieve or experience key benefit unlike competitive
alternative our solution or we unique point of difference now the statement can be amalgamated
into a paragraph of sentences but when you're recording this in your brand guidelines or any
other kind of documentation you're going to find that brand representatives are far more likely to
remember it if you keep this structure as outlined before rather than a bulky paragraph they're much
more likely to store the information segmented like this and then be able to recall that easily
now the first time you come across this structure it can be easy to get confused and it doesn't
tend to click until you see it in action so let's take a look at the statement structure in action
with a brand delivering gourmet style easy to prepare home meals we help busy professionals who
don't have time to prepare the meals that they would like to achieve or experience stress-free
restaurant quality home-cooked meals unlike other home cooked delivery services our solution or we
deliver locally produced fresh ingredients and easy to follow recipes straight to your doorstep
so in a sentence it's going to look like this we help busy professionals who don't have the time
to prepare the meals they would like to achieve stress-free restaurant quality home-cooked meals
unlike other home-cooked delivery services we deliver locally produced fresh ingredients and
easy-to-follow recipes straight to your doorstep now if you're thinking steven
that brand positioning statement didn't sound catchy or clever or memorable well
now you know why it's not designed to be a customer-facing document we have other tools
within the brand strategy arsenal to be able to communicate this information more effectively
more memorably so our audience remembers it and can recall it more easily this documentation is
designed as an internal only documentation and it's designed to guide the decisions and actions
of the leadership team so they can make effective decisions when it comes to the brand strategy
and to the communication strategy so now you know who your positioning statement is designed for
and what its job is and now you can go and develop one effectively by following this six step process
i really hope this video helped if it did give it a thumbs up it helps other people see it and
let me know where you're at within your brand development process are you developing a brand
for yourself are you developing a brand for a client if you're watching this video chances are
you're coming across your brand positioning statement process have you developed your
brand positioning strategy or have you learned anything within this video that
you're going to integrate with into your own processes let me know in the comments below
i'll do my best to get back to every single comment and I will see you in the next video
cheers