Positioning: shaping how customers view your company and products
Positioning is a core aspect of an overall marketing strategy. Once you've selected your target market segments, you must decide how your products should be positioned in the marketplace. Remember - positioning is something the market does to you, not the other way around. People will naturally categorize and position you in some way, so the goal is to influence that behavior as strongly as possible in your favor.
-
Develop a strong value proposition.
What is the total value your company offers customers in terms of evaluating, purchasing, using and maintaining your products and services, minus the total costs of doing so?
-
Know your competitors'
value propositions.
How does your company and product match up to customer needs versus other available alternatives? Key to the process of positioning is selecting your competitors - you need to get the right balance between an inclusive enough set of competitors to be credible to customers, and a limited enough set that customers can see you are clearly the superior option.
- Decide on your positioning strategy.
Your goal is to be positioned as the obvious choice. Technology marketing expert Regis McKenna recommends focusing on intangibles as these are more difficult for competitors to duplicate. Geoffrey Moore of the Chasm Group suggests thinking in terms of how you are positioned against two options: the market alternative (the customer's current source for addressing the need) and the product alternative (an equivalent product that is not tailored to your target market).
|
