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Positioning for Competitive Advantage

Positioning Basics

Branding

 

  

Brand Differentiation

The 3 key principles of Customer Positioning:
Differentiation, Differentiation, Differentiation

Differentiation is all about offering customers something they value but which competitors don't have.

Customer positioning is usually focused on establishing these unique benefits in the minds of customers and potential customers. Delivering the customer experience occurs at all points where the business comes into contact with customers. Similarly, techniques for establishing customer positioning is not just limited to proactive market communications.

Although positioning is also needs to confirm that a business meets the basic needs of customers and delivers all the essential "must have" features, these are only the entry-stakes in competing in a marketplace.

Only clear positioning on factors which are seen as unique are likely to increase sales. This "uniqueness" can either be binary (the product either has it or it hasn't), or a question of degree - where the brand is sufficiently different along some important dimension.

This means businesses must carefully think through which factors will give them competitive advantage. These "differentiators" may occur along several dimensions, for example:

  • Product attributes
    (The only consumer VoIP service to send a sound file of your voicemail messages to your email inbox)
  • Product effects / degree
    (Store 5x more messages in your mailbox than with any other service)
  • Price
    (Lower call charges to China than any other provider)
  • Intended User
    (The only VoIP service designed for small business, not corporates)
  • Usage
    (The only service travelers can use through Hotel room broadband connections)
  • Relation to other products
    (The only service to integrate with your computer's personal address book)

Clearly, there are many, many possible dimensions along which businesses can position. Based on customer insight, the challenge is to pick the propositions which customers will value most, and where the business has greatest strength.

The end goal is to convince customers that you deliver greater benefits (of value) than can be obtained elsewhere - and then to ensure the business delivers on these promises.

Those businesses which anticipate customer needs and shape the market's decision-making criteria are driving the basis of competition in the marketplace.

 

 

 

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