Introduction to Positioning: It’s Not Only Marketing

In marketing and branding, positioning is the strategic process of defining and establishing a distinct place for a brand in its target audience's mind within a competitive landscape. It involves crafting a unique identity and value proposition that sets a brand apart from its competitors.

Positioning is crucial for several reasons:

• Differentiation: In a crowded market, positioning helps a brand stand out by highlighting its unique features, values, and benefits. This differentiation is essential for attracting and retaining customers seeking something specific and valuable.

• Target Audience Alignment: Effective positioning ensures a brand's message resonates with its target audience. By understanding the audience's needs, desires, and preferences, a brand can tailor its positioning to create a strong connection with potential customers.

• Competitive Advantage: Positioning enables a brand to gain a competitive edge by offering something distinctive. This distinctiveness can be based on product features, quality, pricing, or any other factor that resonates with the target audience.

• Consistency: A well-defined positioning strategy provides a framework for consistent messaging across all brand touchpoints. Consistency helps in building trust and a cohesive brand image over time.

• Brand Perception: How a brand is perceived by its audience is crucial to its success. Positioning influences this perception, shaping how customers think and feel about a brand. Positive perceptions can lead to brand loyalty and advocacy.

• Communication: Positioning guides communication strategies. It helps craft clear, relevant, and compelling messages, ensuring the brand's story is effectively communicated to the target audience.

• Long-Term Success: Brands that establish a solid, favorable market position are more likely to achieve long-term success. A well-defined position helps a brand weather market fluctuations and changing trends by remaining rooted in its unique identity.

By practicing and implementing your peers' recommendations, you can improve your positioning, both inside and outside an organization.

These methods empower facilitators and collaboration professionals to have more effective conversations, especially in the lead generation and business development stages.

Positioning

Peter was introduced to this concept a year ago during a workshop he took through Chris Doe, the Future, for owners of creative firms. Peter applied what he learned from this workshop at the Design Gym, sharing his insights, collaborating with participants, and deepening his own expertise.

Positioning can be a valuable tool for explaining to others what you do, how you can be of service, and how to grow your impact and business presence. 

Your attitude plays a crucial role in positioning. But, what is the meaning of the word attitude? For Peter, attitude always meant a mindset. For example, his attitude when showing up in the world: Is it positive or negative? Optimistic or pessimistic? etc. 

Peter has multiple family members who are studying to be pilots. In the aviation field, the word attitude has a different meaning. Attitude is defined as the angle and position, especially in approach, knowing where you are, what your pitch is, and what your speed is. 

In this line of work, what is the angle of approaching a problem? 

Peter then opened the discussion to the group: what is your position, and how do you describe it? Where are you headed? That is why we are here today to learn more about that. 

What You Do

This model was put together around the verbs that we use when discussing what we do. 

What is the simplest verb that you use in your life that describes what you do? For example, Peter creates; he is a maker. Finding a simple verb can be helpful to simplify and clarify, because often we get lost in the language and complex terms of art.

Participants then worked on a Miro board to map the diversity by choosing the circle with the color of the verb that relates to them. Here are the results of the group. This exemplifies the diversity of teams. Not everyone is a designer, a creator, or a leader; it takes a team. 

How do we position ourselves so that we can create assets and have conversations strategically to connect with people who need our help? 

Mistakes

These are the seven common errors that we make when trying to position ourselves:

1. Democratize: This is good for team cohesion to ensure that everybody feels a part. But this can result in too much from too many people that it does not result in an effective positioning statement. 

2. Drawing too large of a circle: This means thinking about how we want to communicate in the future by including everything we have done in the past. Sometimes, we include too many things from the past, which results in us drawing the circle too large. 

3. Selection bias: Changing the positioning to imagine what the client/audience wants to hear. 

4. Collapse strategy with implementation: Are you helping people with their thinking or with the execution? It is helpful to know where your emphasis is as opposed to collapsing the two together. 

5. Overvalue Variety: Looking ahead to the future and accepting projects without intention rather than staying busy. 

6. Confusion: Did you confuse the person that you are talking to?

7. Was your positioning not meaningful? The client is a good match, but we missed an opportunity to work with them by explaining the position in a non-meaningful way.