Positioning is one of the most misunderstood concepts in marketing. Done well, it creates clarity and focus. Done badly, it becomes a slogan that changes every year.
In strategic marketing, positioning is a decision about what your brand stands for. It shapes how your brand is perceived relative to the competition. And more importantly, why that perception matters to consumers.
Brands that succeed at earning a strong positioning, one that resonates with their target market, gain a commercial advantage. It drives preference, pricing power, brand equity, and all the other good things needed for sustainable brand growth.
When brands get it wrong, they’ve forgotten what positioning is really about and who it’s for.
Positioning is an internal exercise. It’s not meant to be ‘seen’ by consumers. You might find it buried on company websites under brand promise, values, our mission, brand DNA… but the end goal of positioning isn’t to be emblazoned on packaging or turned into a radio jingle.
Instead, it’s there to guide the decisions we make inside our business. Ultimately, positioning is what we want consumers to think about our brand, not what we’re going to say TO them.
That’s why effective positioning strategy begins without ideas or assumptions. It starts with market research and follows a clear strategic process, using frameworks like brand positioning maps, the 3Cs model, and brand positioning statements.
What is brand positioning?
Brand positioning is the space a brand owns in the mind of a customer. It answers three important questions:
- Who is this brand for?
- What does it stand for?
- How is it better than the alternatives?
In other words, what people think when they think about your brand.
So what is positioning in marketing? Through positioning, we are trying to earn a few points of meaningful difference, or ‘differentiation’, in the minds of consumers.
We are not talking about USPs here. If there was ever a world where a brand or product could be truly unique, that time is long gone.
For marketers today, the most practical brand positioning framework is relative differentiation, developed by Mark Ritson. This is positioning as more (or less) of something than the competition: better value, more convenient, less harmful to the environment…
“Position your brand in such a way that it is perceived to be relatively different from its alternatives, on the attributes and associations that matter most to your target consumers, with enough focus and energy that you influence their purchase decisions.”
– Mark Ritson
If that relative difference is something consumers actually care about, and you can deliver it better than anyone else, it becomes a competitive edge. It gives buyers a reason to choose you beyond price or availability.
The job of positioning, then, is to pinpoint what you can compete on in the market, so you know what to lean into… and what to leave behind.
Positioning vs messaging
Positioning is internal. It is strategy. How we later express that positioning (through advertising, for example) is messaging. That’s tactical.
In simple terms:
- Positioning is how we want to be perceived
- Messaging is how we communicate that
When brands confuse the two, neither can do its job properly.
Positioning comes first. Your brand positioning should be finalised and signed off long before you even think about messaging. If you’re making positioning decisions based on what your eventual brand campaign might look like, you’re doing it wrong.
Positioning guides decisions across the 4Ps:
Price – are we competing on value, or on luxury?
Product – what features or innovations reinforce the positioning?
Place – do our distribution channels back it up? Are we exclusive or convenient?
Communications – positioning shapes what we say in ads, but it also influences wider media strategy like channel mix and investment.
Messaging comes later as an expression, not a driver, of strategy. It lives within communications and reflects the positioning underneath. Messaging can change from campaign to campaign, but it always ties back to the same brand positioning.
One is long-term and brand-level. The other is fluid and usually sits at the campaign-level.
How to position a brand
Consumers don’t spend a long time thinking about brands. They’ve got much more important things to do.
And so in our positioning work, we must aim for simplicity. Customers need to ‘get’ the brand quickly and move on, which is why elaborate or multi-layered positioning is always (yes, always) overkill.
To be clear: the position should be simple. How you arrive at that positioning is not. Marketers have to do the hard work upfront, so the final result is a clean and direct articulation – one that is easy to understand and execute across the business.
Effective positioning clarifies a single question: what do we want consumers to think when they think about our brand?
To answer that question, you might use one or a combination of these brand positioning models and tools:
The 3Cs model: what does the consumer want that our company can deliver better than, or differently from, the competition?
Brand positioning statement: who is our brand for, what do we offer, and how do we frame it versus competitors?
Brand positioning maps: how is our brand perceived on valuable attributes, compared to competitor brands?
Multi-dimensional perceptual maps: what consumer associations exist in the market more broadly? Are there any hidden associations worth building on, or overlaps to avoid?
Brand benefit ladder: what functional and emotional benefits does my brand offer, and where is the right level to compete?
On the MiniMBA in Marketing, you’ll explore how each of these positioning models, including how to apply them in context and which is right for your brand, consumers and category.
Remember, positioning isn’t the end goal. By the end of the process, you should have a short, precise articulation of what your brand stands for in the market. That sentence might look simple on the page, but it should represent weeks – often months – of research, debate and strategic choice.
It will become your brand’s Rosetta Stone, used to guide and sense check every decision that follows.
Why positioning fails in practice
So far, positioning is probably sounding fairly straightforward. And yet, plenty of brands still get it wrong.
Common pitfalls include:
- Trying to appeal to everyone
- Over-claiming difference
- Failing to choose a competitive frame
- Treating positioning as a creative exercise
You cannot do positioning without dedicated market research. You must understand your customers, your competitors, and crucially, your brand from your consumers’ point of view.
Brand perception ultimately lives in the mind of consumers. We cannot control what they think, but we can nudge them in the right direction through positioning. We have the best chance at doing that when our positioning is credible and clearly signals a difference that consumers care about.
On the MiniMBA in Brand Management, you will learn how to create a quantitative brand survey that’ll give you all the data you need about your customers, competitors, and existing brand perceptions.
Positioning is not a creative exercise. We must learn from the market, then make deliberate strategic choices.
See how Rangemaster used MiniMBA in Brand Management principles to revitalise their brand positioning and boost sales by 50%. Read: The MiniMBA frameworks behind Rangemaster’s brilliant new ad
Positioning as a leadership skill
Positioning decisions carry long-term consequences. They shape brand investment, portfolio strategy and growth over time.
Senior marketers are expected to make those calls with clarity and conviction. That’s why positioning is treated as a core strategic capability in leadership roles.