When launching any business, it’s important to know where you stand in the market. You never want to offer the exact same product to the exact same audience with the exact same brand values as your competition. Otherwise, what reason would anyone have to do business with you over them?
Positioning allows you to create a unique space in the market for your company. It includes your promise to consumers and the key differentiators that set your brand apart from the competition.
Without a positioning statement, your differentiators may be lost in the process of communicating your brand and your business may struggle to compete, especially in a saturated market.
The easiest way to write a positioning statement is to break it down into five separate parts and then put them together to form one statement.
First, determine your
- Target market, or what group of consumers you choose to serve
- Differentiators, or what makes you different from your competitors
- Reasons to believe, or proof that your brand delivers on the value it promises
- Frame of reference, or category in which your product competes
- Brand promise, or the assurance to the customer that value will be delivered through interacting with your product
Now it’s time to put it all together. This free, online positioning tool from eCornell can help you out. Take each element you determined above and type them into the positioning tool.
And voila! You have a strong positioning statement. Here’s an entirely fictional example we created for a soft drink product:
For active, cool kids ages 11-17, DrinkMore Cola will deliver a crisp, refreshing, and bubbly citrus taste with a lower sugar level. DrinkMore Cola has perfected a recipe for success featuring natural sugar alternatives with proven youth health benefits combined with a delicious, orange-soda taste kids love. Our delicious and healthier soft drink promises to offer a unique source of citrus-flavored energy without the awful sugar-crash later.
In this example, you can find each part of the positioning statement.
- Target market – active, cool kids ages 11-17
- Differentiators – delivers a crisp, refreshing, and bubbly citrus taste with a lower sugar level
- Reasons to believe – perfected recipe featuring natural sugar alternatives with proven youth health benefits combined with a delicious taste kids love
- Frame of reference – delicious and healthier soft drink
- Brand promise – offers a unique source of citrus-flavored energy without the awful sugar crash later
With this positioning statement in mind, DrinkMore Cola can go on to communicate their differentiators and market positioning in their branding to better attract their target audience and boost their sales. That’s the power of a positioning statement!
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