The Clarifying Function of Brand Positioning.

If you don’t know what your brand stands for, how will your customers?

Strong brands are more than just an identifiable logo or memorable tagline. Looking deeper, their positioning sets the foundation in developing their own perspective and becoming a meaningful part of culture embraced by a brand’s employees and their target audience.

Golden arches. Sleek and innovative computer products. Eco-conscious, outdoor recreation clothing. You can probably guess which brands we’re hinting at without being told their names. That’s the power of branding. But what comes to mind when you think of these brands? Do they conjure up any emotions or make you feel something? Do they share or influence your beliefs? Does their price evoke quality or luxury? If you were a potential employee would you want to work there? These feelings, values and differentiating traits that you associate with a brand are all thanks to positioning.  

Brand Positioning is a strategic tool that sets the groundwork for guiding a brand’s direction, defines its unique identity and determines how it competes and wins against similar brands. From a marketing perspective, this helps customers better understand what your brand stands for and why they should choose you over competitors based on functional incentives like price, quality, attributes and offerings.

But more than that, it allows you to connect across media, tactics and interactions with your audience on a deeper level, shaping their perception of your business while creating emotional drivers. Over time, your brand can stake its position and occupy customers’ minds, which influences their behavior and leads to the holy grail of branding—loyalty.  

And here's the thing: even if you do nothing, your brand will take on a position of its own based on assumptions and experiences. Maybe that will work out in your favor, but what if it doesn’t? You could find yourself course correcting to drive sentiment. So if you haven’t already, grab the steering wheel and help your audience understand what your brand stands for by proactively making positioning decisions that lead them to the desired perception.

Easy as that, right? Well, not so fast. Successful businesses understand there’s more to positioning than just how your brand presents itself to customers.

Start Inside Out
Sure, positioning is a marketing strategy, but it’s also a business strategy that informs a range of business decisions as diverse as HR policies, attracting and retaining employees, team morale, pricing and even office location. So before you can position your brand in your customer’s mind, it has to be defined and understood internally first. When positioning is focused beyond trying to influence marketing goals and creates clarity from within a business, it strengthens it from the inside out, ensuring that every member of your organization—from employees, to stakeholders, to decision makers—are an expression of your position. With internal alignment as your starting point, you can then begin positioning outwardly through marketing, advertising and promotional tactics.

Find Your Path, Stick To It
With your brand’s positioning aligned both internally and externally, over time it naturally becomes part of its genetic code. Not only will this make your brand easier to understand and create consistency when implemented in marketing communications, it establishes a path that keeps your business on course for future growth, whether that’s evaluating new products, acquisitions, partnerships or even pricing. If any of it doesn’t feel like it lines up or starts to deviate from the path, then it’s probably not right. 

Walk the Walk, Others Will Follow
Don’t just talk about your values outwardly, live up to them. When the values that a brand positions itself around are reinforced and reflected internally, businesses make authentic connections with people. Similar to how consumers decide on brands, partners and investors will choose businesses whose projected values are reinforced and embraced within the organization. And when that positioning is brought to life through the employee experience, businesses can better attract, recruit and retain personnel who are more likely to be engaged at work and committed to the organization’s success.

So as you can see, positioning isn’t just a marketing solution. It’s a powerful tool that brings your business top-of-mind for potential partners and employees, creates decision-making clarity, drives perception and helps shape the future of your business.

Which leads us to the big, important questions:

Was your positioning strategy actively considered or are you simply reacting to business conditions day-to-day, one decision at a time? 

Is your brand positioned solely with your target audience or is it being rallied around internally as well?

Digging deeper on this point, how would you describe what your brand stands for? If you asked a customer, would they say the same thing? What about a fellow employee? 

If there are any inconsistencies in brand experiences between customers and employees, now’s the time to evaluate your positioning with the right branding partner. One who can help you align your brand’s values to create cohesion and consistency in the minds of everyone who encounters your brand.