As per the study of a market research firm called Yankelovich, an average consumer on the internet and other forms of media can view a minimum of 3000 to up to 20.000 marketing messages every day. Even 3000 views per day is a great number for any brand to create a difference.
As a matter of fact, this is neither the development of the recent past nor is developed by the internet or e-commerce. Studies indicate that it started way back in the 1960s, the early days of television and since then, television viewers have been watching as many as 5000 advertising messages every day.
The fact of the matter is that marketing in today’s world is unreasonably over communicated and at times, they make no sense at all. The idea of market positioning has evolved back in the 1960s itself to help genuine brands break out of this advertising clutter and create a brilliant impression on their target audience with a reasonable amount of advertising messages that emphasize on making a whole lot of sense.
Understanding Market Positioning Strategy
Market Positioning is a meticulous branding plan which comprises a very deep analysis of the consumers’ consciousness and behavior. Based on that, a business or marketer will develop the most precise and accurate approach to reach and influence the target audience in a more meaningful way at a perfect time and place.
If you are still wondering if it is really possible, it is absolutely possible. It may take a considerable amount of time in collecting the most authentic business data as well as developing the most effective and organized way to create the best impression on the target audience but it is certainly worthwhile in the long run.
Ways to Position Your Brand in a Competitive Niche
Positioning your brand in a competitive niche isn’t really impossible and in fact, you can help your brand rank higher even in a competitive niche provided that you follow the right approach. There’s one thing for sure; there is no shortcut to it.
Research is the only thing that will help your brand in ranking higher and the deeper the research, the better the results are going to be. In this post, we are going to share six brilliant ways by which you can conduct a deep research in all sense for a better positioning of your brand.
Evaluate the current position of your Brand
The success of any business lies in going right the basics first. Evaluating the present position of one’s brand or business may seem to be a pretty basic thing but it is how one should start if at all one cares to position one’s brand in a competitive niche. This is going to give you a very clear picture of the competition. Now, when you plan to do it, the first thing you need to consider is the target audience.
Also, it is quite crucial to comprehend the various aspects of your audience. This can be studying their behavior with the other brands, their exact requirement, their purchasing power and of course, their grievances pertaining to the product or service that they have been using so far.
This will certainly help you define your customers well. The next best thing you can probably do is identifying your mission, values and of course, the factors that make your pretty different from the rest of the market. Also, analyze as to how friendly is your current position towards your audience for them to approach you.
Determine your competition
After you make it this far, it’s time to take a close look into the market and see who are the ones who are doing really well in your niche. There are various ways to go about it.
One of the most common ways is enquiring from the sales team as to who are the competitors that are coming in the way of their sales. Also, you may so a search using a market keyword related to your niche and see what are the companies listed for that keyword.
Another brilliant way of determining a competitor is asking the customers about their favorite brands or products in your niche. Choose the ones that you think are the best and begin your competitor analysis. Now, a lot of you might wonder as to why would one even need to do a competitor analysis and might genuinely feel that it’s a waste of time.
However, in today’s world, every business performs a competitor analysis as it helps a business comprehend the various strategies that one’s competitor has used in attaining to such a brilliant position in a particular niche. Of course, you ought to pick a competitor who is doing unimaginably well in your niche.
Competitor analysis
After determining your competition, the next thing you can probably do is perform a deep research on your competitor. If you really think your competitor is doing exceptionally well in your niche, you ought to find out as to what is actually helping your competitor do so well.
Most importantly, you need to ensure that you don’t miss out on any important aspect of competitor analysis. Here are the most important factors to bear in mind while conducting a competitor research:
- The kind of products and services your competitor deals with
- The strengths and weaknesses of your competitor
- Marketing Strategies of your competitor
- The current position of your competitor
You can’t afford to miss out on any of these above points else the research would be just so incomplete.
Analyze the things that make your brand unique
You ought to ask yourself a very simple question as to why the customers will even care to buy your products or services when there are already multiple vendors dealing with the same products or services in the market.
Customers would only consider buying the same thing from you if you can offer something better or unique, right? The competitor analysis will certainly help you comprehend the strengths, weaknesses and marketing strategies of your competitor but in addition to that, you need to find out if there’s anything better or unique you can provide the customers with.
It can be achieved by comparing your products or services to those of your competitor and you never know; you might find a certain area of weakness of your competitor in which you are good. This will eventually help you offer the customers something better and find a leading edge over your competitor.
Develop your positioning statement
After you fully understand your strengths and weaknesses as well as that of your competitor, it’s time to create a brilliant positioning statement. A positioning statement is usually a declaration comprising a couple of sentences to emphasize the unique value of your brand and communicate it well to the customers. Most importantly, it should answer the following questions:
- Who is your target audience?
- What’s your category?
- In what ways your products or services are better than that of others?
- What’s the proof of that?
It is important to create a positioning statement that will stand out among several others. One of the best examples is Amazon’s positioning statement: “Our vision is to be the earth’s most customer-centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.”
Must Read: How to Build Customer Loyalty Through Your Brand Image
Check if the positioning statement is workable?
Although there’s no denying the fact that it takes a great deal of time and effort to create a positioning statement, it is still seen as a small part of the whole thing unless and until it achieves its goal. However, the actual success lies in measuring the impact of the statement on the consumers, going through their feedback on a regular basis, working on the feedback and making it more workable.
The Bottom Line
Positioning your brand in a competitive niche is never an easy job and it can be only achieved with a great deal of hard work and research. Understanding one’s current position as well as that of one’s competitor and finding out the best strategies will certainly help you create the best positioning statement.
However, the hardest part is achieving the goal which will, of course, take a lot of tests, experiments, and gathering of customers’ feedback. If you are prepared to do this meticulously, you can certainly position your brand higher even in a competitive niche.