Is your company positioned for success?

by: Nate Parr

Are you building a strong brand for your company? While your name, logo ad and packaging help initiate consumer trial, it’s ultimately the customer experience that validates and sustains your brand. What keeps your customers coming back and recommending you to others? It’s your company’s brand position and it’s an extremely powerful and often overlooked element of branding.

Your brand position distinguishes you from your competitors. It’s a single, clear and concise message that describes the benefit that customers receive if they buy from you. Remember, people don’t buy products and services. They buy the benefits they associate with those products and services. Keep your message simple and free from clutter and “flowery” language. Your brand position should be your “elevator pitch” in that you should be able to convey your message in the time you spend with someone on an elevator.

A carefully crafted brand position is the cornerstone of strategic marketing. It should be the core message in all of your marketing materials, from your website and collateral to ad creative to search engine marketing. Convey a consistent brand position. Say it well. Say it often.

An effective brand position permeates more than just marketing; it must be ingrained in every aspect of your business. If your entire company does not work in unison to deliver the brand position, then your company ultimately breaks its promise to the public and brand loyalty is severely eroded.

To develop a brand position, you must understand your customer through detailed market research and an honest assessment of your organization’s strengths and weaknesses. Company executives often have difficulty constructing a strategic brand position because of inherent personal bias, hesitance to deliver results that may offend management, and lack of experience in conducting effective market research.

A professional marketing consultant can be invaluable in helping you develop your company’s brand position by delivering objective third-party analysis, market research expertise, and the third-party credibility to present findings to executives and board members.

Once your company’s brand position is established, the next step is a marketing plan. After all, even the best strategy fails when carried out improperly. If you would like to build your company’s brand, give us a call, we’re in the position to help.