Brand Positioning: Being #1 in Your Customer's Mind

Hello, I’m Jim Glover, That Branding Guy, for Once a Day Marketing. Today is Smart Monday, thank you for joining us.  I hope we continue to provide you with ideas and inspiration for marketing your business every day.  We are going to conclude our series on the 7Ps of Marketing with Positioning.

Brand Positioning has two components, physical and psychological.

With regard to the physical component, use the 7Ps, which we’ve talked a lot about here at Once a Day Marketing, to create product benefit appeal to your target customers.  On the psychological side, leverage the 7Ps to create a favorable impression of your brand in the minds of your target customers, which is a slightly different process.

Let me give you an example.  Imagine I produced a workout video that gets you into great shape, and I brand that product Buns of Steel.  It immediately conjures up a certain image in your mind, doesn’t it?  The image of how fit one may become using the video creates a favorable impression and encourages customers to buy the product.

Then imagine I take the same video without changing a single thing in it, and call it Buns of Pudding.  All of a sudden the customer has a very different impression in their mind of what the product benefit is and may not buy the product even though the two videos are exactly the same.

Goals of brand positioning include becoming ranked number one in some dimension of the purchase in the mind of your customer.  Think about that, think about being number one.  Do you remember who came in second at Daytona?  Do you remember who was second in the 100 meters at the Olympics?  Being number one is very important with respect to brand positioning because it locks and impression into the customers mind.

You also want to consider the physical and emotional benefits that you are providing to your customers.  You want them to understand exactly what they are getting, but you want them to understand how they are going to feel with respect to the purchase as well.

Let’s use our Taco Stand example to define brand positioning a little further.  A customer is seeking authentic, fast, inexpensive New Mexican cuisine.  There are many high end restaurants which are authentic however they are not fast or inexpensive.  Conversely, McDonald’s is here in New Mexico.  They are very inexpensive and fast, but lack authentic New Mexican cuisine.  Now, what is the positioning of our taco stand?  Very authentic food that is also very fast and inexpensive.  So, in the mind of customer that taco stand commands a number one position with respect to the client’s criteria.

I’ll be talking a lot more about brand positioning in the future because it’s such an important topic to understand and implement strategy around.

That concludes our Smart Monday.  Please join us tomorrow for Strategic Tuesday.  To discuss a one on one service engagement and enhance the marketing and branding for your organization, contact James Glover: (505) 501-1330 or onceadaymarketing@gmail.com.  I’m Jim Glover, That Branding Guy, for Once a Day Marketing and we’ll see you next time.