Have you found your competitive positioning ‘sweet spot’?
You need to own your positioning, just like Rolls-Royce owns luxury and Google owns search. What do you own? What can you own?
It all starts with having a Point of Difference (POD) that is believable and sustainable. A POD gives you the "sweet spot" that delivers the winning positioning by enabling you to outperform competitors and exceed your brand performance. The best way to look for differentiation is among perceptions of your brand and competitors or can you find out how to create differentiation on attributes that are important to your market.
So how do we determine a POD? How do you do it well?
At OYA we believe that the ‘sweet spot’ is where there is alignment across three key areas:
What people want - what features or benefits are important to your target market.
What you do best – identify your brand/products high performance areas on that feature/benefit.
What are your competitors weak performance areas - Identify what your competitors struggle at on that feature or benefit.
What do people want?
Finding the sweet spot of competitive positioning involves determining what features or benefits are most important to the end users. There are a number of approaches to determining attribute importance, from straightforward rating or ranking questions to more complex approaches, such as conjoint analysis.
What do you do best?
Determine the attributes that makes you product/brand stronger than your competitors. Evaluate this via market research in the form of surveys, focus groups, depth Interviews, sentiment analysis Keep listening to the market about where your strengths are.
Make sure you compare your brand’s performance on various attributes vs. your competition.
At OYA, the perceptual mapping technique has been one of the most effective mechanisms to Identify the strengths of a brand. But, OYA goes beyond looking at the graphic snapshot of the competitive landscape by unearthing key areas for improvement.
What your competitors struggle with
The best way to own your positioning is to look for differentiation among perceptions of your brand and your competitors. It’s important to find out what you can own and then even more essential to own it in the eyes of your target segments.
We believe brand positioning is fluid and it’s advantageous to remember that there are times company branding may be headed in one direction but as times change, so do the values of the company. If the business cannot evolve, it may lose the customer base it once supported, if their needs aren’t being met. Messaging needs to adapt and brand positioning helps to get that messaging out to the market.
At OYA, we can help you understand the needs and perceptions of your market to uncover how your brand best fits on those three areas.
Say hello if you would like to find out how to find your brands sweet spot.
