5 Marketing Strategies for Market Positioning
Market positioning is a crucial part of a company’s marketing mix. Market positioning describes the position that a particular brand occupies in the public’s mind and how it differs from the ideas of other products and the brands of competitors. In the business environment, market positioning allows a company to separate itself from competitors by appealing directly to the customer without the need for an expensive advertising budget. One of the first steps to market positioning is identifying what type of consumer’s your brand targets. This is useful for every form of marketing you can use – even if you are simply using services like Streamoz to improve your social media marketing, it helps to know which social media platform to focus on to target the right type of consumer. Reaching out to a lucrative digital marketing agency is also very beneficial.
Market positioning can be done in several ways. One way is to use consumer surveys as a way to identify your target market. The data collected on potential consumers can be correlated with the ideas about behavior, consumer values, and consumer concerns. This allows a company to make important changes in its marketing to appeal to a new set of consumers. A perceptual map is a visual representation of where a company’s brand is positioned in the market and how they relate to competitors.
Another way to look at market positioning is to make a list of marketing actions that align with your company’s core values and goals. The positioning statements should describe how the marketing and advertising activities of the company contribute to its overall success. The company should discuss how the activity supports its goals, what types of results the marketing activities yield, and what it will take to achieve those results. A marketing analysis is a tool that can be used to support the positioning statement.
A third way to examine market positioning is to develop a marketing position strategy. A marketing position strategy is a plan that is developed by the marketing department that relates to how a product or service fits into the larger picture of a company’s future business. For example, suppose you sell a particular type of vacuum cleaner. You want to position yourself as the top solution provider for consumers who are looking for these cleaners. Your marketing position strategy should identify how your company will differentiate itself from competitors. It should also discuss how your company plans on promoting the product.
Developing a marketing position strategy takes time and attention to detail. The strategies must be developed based on the understanding of what types of messages will resonate with customers in the marketplace and which types will not. They must also take into account what types of information are available online. For instance, many shoppers use search engines to locate the information that they need when it comes to products and services. As such, the market positioning should be optimized around search engine optimization and link-building strategies.
In addition to having a strategic plan, a firm needs to have a measurement system to track progress as it develops its market positioning strategy. This includes regularly monitoring competitor activity, benchmarking performance against previously established goals, and measuring the cost-to-market and the to-market value of each product or service offerings. It is also important to develop an effective tracking system that alerts executives to any changes in performance that could lead to a competitive advantage. Ultimately, the most successful companies incorporate several different approaches to improving their brands.
Market positioning, by contrast, is much less focused on developing a unique brand. Rather, it focuses on communicating a set of values and advantages that customers can identify with and access. The most effective brand positioning occurs when a firm develops a marketing message that is consistent with the value proposition statements it makes. A good example of a value proposition statement is “provide value superior to other companies.” If a product or service has these qualities, potential customers will inherently align with the brand and be willing to make a purchase.
A key strategy for creating a market positioning strategy is consistency. Market positioning should not change depending on the circumstances. For instance, if a new competitor enters the market, a brand should never change its value proposition statement to align with that competitor. Otherwise, the customer may become confused and will not align with the brand again. Similarly, if the current customer becomes frustrated with your product or service, a market positioning strategy should not change to try to attract that customer’s attention.