How Effective is your Online Brand Positioning?

Brand positioning is key if you want to really succeed in the business world. The idea is to identify your desired marketing niche and then dominate that niche so powerfully that your brand creates an impression in the mind of the customer that makes it stand out from the rest of the competition. Your brand positioning should reflect how you want to be seen in the eyes of your customers.

Tips for Positioning Your Brand

Differentiation

Your product needs to stand out from the rest of your competition. Answer this question: what makes your product or service different from anything else that is currently available? Also, ask yourself how your product benefits the user and why it should be valuable to them. Your marketing should emphasize those qualities that set your product apart. Let’s look at a few examples:

· Dove: Dove’s Real Beauty campaign has been enormously popular. Instead of promoting the idea that women should strive to meet some impossible standard of beauty, they emphasize that beauty comes in a variety of forms and that we should be content with who we are and embrace ourselves. In a world where bodies, especially female bodies, are critiqued, analyzed, and compared to a largely unattainable standard, this type of campaign was a refreshing change for women worldwide. With the rise of social media, Dove has expanded this campaign to include the “real women” that their brand celebrates.

· Apple: Do you remember those Mac versus PC commercials? Think of the distinction made between the man personifying the PC and the man acting as the Mac. With one commercial, Apple was able to convey that their product was for the young, hip, creatively-minded individual who wanted to do more with their computer than just computer process and send email. Now, whenever someone says that they are involved in graphic design or music, the automatic assumption is that they use an Apple product.

Audience

To be able to position your brand effectively, you need to know who your target audience/market is and where they congregate. If your customer base seems to only be active on Facebook, then focus on Facebook campaigns, rather than pouring resources into a Twitter account. Knowing your audience will also help you figure out what kind of language to use, what kinds of services and promotionals would be most effective, and other things of that nature. This is particularly important when developing social media campaigns.

Tagline

Your tagline needs to be memorable and touch your customer base on an emotional level. It should also be fairly short and to-the-point. These are examples of brands doing tagline-ing correctly:

· State Farm: “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.” With this, State Farm comes across as personable (like a neighbor) and as a company that offers safety and security, which is what people are looking for in an insurance company.

· The U.S. Marine Corp: “The Few. The Proud. The Marines.” This tagline emphasizes the elite nature of this particular branch of the military, as well as the feelings of pride that one has when they are part of this highly-trained, superior group.

Social Media

Last, but definitely not least, is social media, which is only increasing in importance in regard to brand positioning. Social media provides a place where companies and their customers can interact. Your social media campaigns need to reflect your brand’s identity, come across as authentic, be engaging and/or interesting, and present an overall positive image of your brand. Here are some examples of brands that totally rocked social media:

· Always and their #LikeAGirl social media campaign took what is usually considered an insult and made something positive and empowering out of it. It aired as a television commercial, was on YouTube, and shared on thousands of Facebook feeds.

· Friskies and their Dear Kitten videos are one of my most favorite examples of a company using YouTube correctly. People don’t get on YouTube to watch commercials, they want to learn something or be entertained, and the Dear Kitten videos provide the latter. I myself have rewatched all of them several times, fully aware that what I am viewing is essentially a commercial, but it’s so funny and bizarre that I don’t really care. The videos feature two cats, one older and the other a kitten, with the older cat providing life advice to the younger. It’s basically a description of life from the point of view of a cat. With this campaign, Friskies has done everything right — it involves animals (everyone loves cute animal videos), it’s funny, it offers a unique perspective, and, perhaps most importantly, it doesn’t seem like a commercial. With this campaign, as well as some of their other cat videos, Friskies establishes itself as a company that really knows and loves cats, and enjoys their antics. They seem to care about their product, which is highly valuable.