Hopefully, you enjoyed our last blog, “Branding Your Sanitation Business – Know Your Audience” – the first step in building a brand strategy and marketing your sanitation company! Today we’re moving onto step 2, “Establishing Your Market Position”.
To recap, during the 2018 FOWA Trade Show, we were able to host a marketing seminar centered around building a brand strategy for your business. There were 5 basic steps to our presentation, and last week’s blog covered the first step: Know Your Target Audience.
We’ll start step 2 with a simple definition:
Brand positioning is the process of positioning your brand in the mind of your customers. Brand positioning is also referred to as a positioning strategy, brand strategy, or a brand positioning statement. The goal is to create a unique impression in the customer’s mind so that the customer associates something specific and desirable with your brand that is distinct from rest of the marketplace.
How to Your Market Position
There are a lot of ‘ins and outs’ to establishing your market position, so to keep things simple, we’ll say there are 7 key steps to effectively clarify your positioning in the marketplace:
- Determine how your brand is currently positioning itself
- Identify your direct competitors
- Understand how each competitor is positioning their brand
- Compare your positioning to your competitors to identify your uniqueness
- Develop a distinct and value-based positioning idea
- Craft a brand positioning statement
- Test the efficacy of your brand positioning statement
Part of identifying where you currently stand has to do with your current customers. This is why knowing your audience is key to establishing a market position. Why do your customers think you’re unique? Do your competitors see you as a threat? What can you offer, that no one else in the industry has? These are the important questions you need to ask.
At PolyPortables, we feel that our unique feature is our ability to work directly with our customers, help them grow and develop their businesses with them. We’re not just focused on sales, but on building friendly business relationships. Our brand position is, “a worldwide manufacturer of portable sanitation equipment, dedicated to helping our customers succeed“.
Now that you have a unique quality identified, you need to craft a Market Position Statement!
Writing a Position Statement
A positioning statement is a one or two sentence declaration that communicates your brand’s unique value to your customers in relation to your main competitors.
If you don’t have a statement or want to update, consider the following points:
- Target Market: What is a concise summary of the attitudinal and demographic description of the target group of customers your brand is attempting to appeal to and attract?
- Market Definition: What category is your brand competing in and in what context does your brand have relevance to your customers?
- Brand Promise: What is the most compelling (emotional/rational) benefit to your target customers that your brand can own relative to your competition?
- Reason to Believe: What is the most compelling evidence that your brand delivers on its brand promise?
“For [target customers], [company name] is the [market definition] that delivers [brand promise] because only [company name] is [reason to believe].”
Tune in Next Time
This is just the 2nd of 5 steps to building a brand strategy, marketing your business and getting out in front of new customers. Remember to tune in to the website next week, when we’ll cover ‘Setting Marketing Goals”.
As always, if you need help with our products, services or anything else portable sanitation related, contact us anytime!
Phone: (706) 864-3776 | Toll Free: (800) 241-7951 | E-mail: Office@polyportables.com
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