Anyone involved in marketing has probably heard the term “brand positioning”. But what does it involve? Why is it so important? Just what is brand positioning and how do you position your brand successfully? And why should brand positioning matter to B2B businesses like contract manufacturers?
What is brand positioning?
Search the internet and you will find a number of definitions of brand positioning, with some more useful than others. Perhaps one of the best is that put forward by marketing authority Dr Philip Kotler in his book Marketing Management:
“The act of designing the company’s offering and image to occupy a distinctive place in the mind of the target market”
Let’s take a moment to break down this quote and examine its key elements.
- “The act of designing…” – Firstly, brand positioning is something you have to actively do, and it is something that you have to design – in other words, something you have to think about and then put into action.
- “... the company’s offering and image…” – Secondly, it’s not just about your image, it's about the product or service you are offering too.
- “... to occupy a distinctive place…” – Thirdly, it’s distinctive; your brand has to be individual and, as far as possible, unique to cut through the noise and be successful.
- “... in the mind of the target market.” – Lastly, and possibly most importantly, your brand positioning's success will be measured by how your customers and prospective customers perceive it.
Why should contract manufacturers care about brand positioning?
For contract manufacturers working in a B2B market, brand positioning is important because it impacts their differentiation and customer perception. Having a well-defined brand positioning helps contract manufacturers stand out from their competitors and communicate their unique value propositions, which can be critical for attracting and retaining customers when your services and offerings are similar to your competitors, which is typically the case in the manufacturing services industry.
Effective brand positioning also builds credibility and trust. Businesses that position themselves as niche experts or leaders can leverage this reputation to create stronger relationships with their OEM customers and partners. With the right brand positioning, you can acquire new business but also foster long-term loyalty among existing clients, contributing to sustainable growth and stability in an often volatile market.
Designing your brand
Your organisation will have a business strategy and a corresponding marketing strategy. These should be the starting points for your brand strategy, as your brand positioning needs to serve your marketing strategy, which in turn serves your business strategy. Your marketing strategy should give you a good idea of where you ideally want to position your brand in the eyes of your target market.
Without going too deeply into marketing strategy, you need to consider where your brand sits on some parameters. For example, one of the most obvious is the balance between price and quality. Consider these four extremes:
- High Cost + High Quality
- Low Cost + High Quality
- High Cost + Low Quality
- Low Cost + Low Quality
Where do you want to be with your product or service? Are you going for high quality at a premium price? Or perhaps you are aiming to produce a value-for-money, basic product that does its job well without frills for a bargain price?
(Side note here: While you could pick any of these as part of your brand positioning strategy, high cost and low quality are unlikely to be the basis of a long-term successful business.
Other example parameters include:
- Ease of use
- Number of features
- Efficiency
You should aim for your brand to sit somewhere within those parameters. Remember, these are only examples of the many parameters you should consider as part of your brand positioning. Many of these parameter sets will be determined by the nature of the product or service you are offering and your target market. The more parameters you consider and position your brand within, the more you define your brand positioning.
It's important to consider more intangible parameters, too—such as friendliness, stylishness, or eco-friendliness of the brand. Consider your stance on sustainability, your business practice ethics, whether your product quality is superior, or if your customer service is second to none. These are all intangible benefits of your brand that can truly set your brand apart and are worth showcasing as part of your brand positioning.
You will need to pick a number of parameters to aim for, as these will ultimately become the key pillars of your brand, which in turn will influence your brand promise, visual identity, and tone of voice.
The final outcome of this planning is a brand positioning statement or a few words that sum up your brand promise. Whilst this needs to be kept brief, it should be quite specific and avoid truisms or clichés. Remember, it should be distinctive.
Whatever positioning you aim for, it’s vital that it’s achievable and that you are not setting unrealistic expectations of your brand for your customers. You have to make an honest assessment of your organisation’s capabilities, as an overly optimistic brand positioning will not survive exposure to market realities.
Creating your brand offering
A realistic brand positioning is important as it’s not just your marketing messages influencing your target market. The perception of your brand identity is affected by other marketing efforts like reliability, customer service, media reviews, feedback from peers, reviews on websites, as well as competitors' messages and a prospect's own personal bias.
This means that effective brand positioning is not just about marketing. If your customer service is poor or the product underperforms, then no amount of marketing will shift the customer's perception of your brand.
But you cannot divorce your marketing from your business strategy—your brand values have to be lived internally and externally. Every part of the business has to be on board with the brand; you cannot afford to say one thing and do another.
Making your brand stand out
To be successful, you will need to position your brand in a space that is not already occupied by a strong competitor. No brand succeeds by being like everyone else; it succeeds by being different, having a unique position, and having a strong brand personality.
To do this, you will need to thoroughly understand the market your product or service is in, the landscape, and your competitors. This comprehensive knowledge and understanding should have been gained as a result of the brand research and investigation that fed into your overall marketing and business strategies. Without a sense of what is out there already, you cannot plot a path to a spot that is not only unique but also fits with where you want to be.
How contested your market is will determine how much space there is to manoeuvre or spread from that sweet spot. In a saturated market, your brand positioning will have to be focused and precise—in a less busy market, it can be looser and potentially spread wider to capture more business.
Remember those parameters you considered when planning your brand strategy? You will need to plot your competitors against those same parameters. Find out where they fit into the market to ensure your brand positioning is distinctive.
Identifying your target market
Your target market, not your good intentions, will determine whether your brand positioning is a success.
It is easy to market your brand as a particular thing and target a particular segment of the market. And it is just as easy to fall into the trap of imagining that is all you have to do. But unless your marketing efforts actually reach and resonate with your audience, you won’t create brand awareness, and your brand positioning will fail.
As part of your planning, you should audit your brand’s current position within the market. Commission some market research to find out how your brand is currently perceived on your key parameters—this is your brand perception. Once you know your brand's current position within the mind of the target market, you can create a marketing plan that takes you where you want to be.
Over time, you should repeat this market research to monitor your brand’s current position and continually adjust your strategy and marketing outputs as necessary.
At the same time, it is useful to research your competitors’ standing in the market – how are their brands perceived? Is that perception changing over time? This will help ensure your positioning remains distinctive but will also produce useful intelligence on competitors' strengths and weaknesses—insights that you can exploit as part of your marketing strategy.
So why is brand positioning important?
If you've read this far, it should be easy to see why brand positioning is essential to your business. It is no good to have a rock-solid marketing strategy based on appealing to your target market with a particular set of brand characteristics if that target market views your brand as having a completely different set of attributes due to poorly focused messaging or the shortcomings of your offering. There will be no belief in your propositions, no faith in your messaging. They may just see you as being the same as everyone else, they may question your credibility, or at worst, they may even regard your brand as dishonest.
The advantages of a strong, stable brand positioning are many. Once your brand stands for something distinctive and favourable in the mind of the customer, marketing becomes easier as you are simply reinforcing that existing perception rather than persuading or convincing. This reinforcement builds brand loyalty and makes customers more likely to repeat purchases and recommend your brand to others. Other brands will find it harder to dislodge you from your position and more challenging to compete with you. Your messaging can become more consistent and more effective. Energy and resources that would otherwise go to fighting the market can be employed in more productive areas.
Summary
Looking at it another way, whatever you do—and even if you do nothing—your target audience will form an impression of your brand in their minds. Effective brand positioning is the art of ensuring that impression, that space, and that position, is how you want your brand to be perceived as part of your overall marketing strategy, ultimately helping to drive market share and revenue growth for your business.
Editor’s note: This blog post was originally published in August 2022 and has been updated in July 2024 for relevance and accuracy.
