It May Be Time To Rethink Your Positioning

Many people think positioning is a one-time process. After all, it is the method of finding a way to differentiate your company in a compelling way for competitive advantage in a selected market segment.

So let’s think about it. Do any of these factors change? Does competition change? Does what they offer change? Do you focus on new market segments? Do the people in the segments change? Of Course! Therefore, positioning must be revisited when any of these factors change.

So why position? By finding a competitively differentiated, relevant and compelling place in a market, your company can gain a leadership position in that segment. And leaders can establish pricing; leaders have lower costs of sales; leaders have disproportionate shares of publicity and leaders have access to decision-makers. So you’ve already done it once? Think about doing it again. The environment has changed in the last few years. Competitors left, new ones may have come, customers changed the decision making process, new products may offer new benefits, what is important and relevant to your market segment may have changed.

1. Are you entering an emerging market? Positioning can help you be the “Trailblazer”*. Which are the early adopter markets? Who will pay for new, untested products? Who needs your product and is willing to work with you (warts and all) for competitive advantage. It will identify what factors are important to the audience and allow you to create the messaging that resonates with the target market.

2. Have you successfully created a new market and competitors are knocking? As a “Trailblazer”*, revisiting your positioning ensures you continue to have a compelling competitive differentiation, letting you rise above the noise and continue to offer a meaningful, differentiable value proposition to the market. Don’t let your competitors take away your market share, make sure you understand what they are saying to customers and that you meet the customer needs better than they do.

3. Have you captured a market segment and now want to expand to new markets to sustain growth? As you move to new markets, it is critical that you ensure your position and messages reflect your new target’s needs and desires and stand out from the new competition in this market.

4. Are you in a rapidly expanding market? It’s “Beat The Clock”* time. Capturing market share is the name of the game in a fast growing market. If you are having problems capturing and growing your market share, you must revisit your positioning to make sure the benefit you communicate differentiates you from your competition and is meaningful to the market.

5. Has the market gone through huge growth and it is now a market share war between you and your competitors? You want to ensure you take market share. How to do that? Find new niches to make your own. In these highly competitive “War Games*, you must fight in a crowded market by finding those market segments and creating products, services or messages that meet their exclusive needs.

6. Is your product or company focused in a stagnant market? Positioning can find areas of needs that no one else has targeted, enabling you to “Leapfrog”* over the competition. Create new product features or services, new positioning and messaging which allow you to stand out and change the actual market dynamics.

7. Is your market in decline? You can “Leapfrog”* over your competition by finding product features and customer needs which have not been met by competitive offerings in the past and are important to customers. By simply stressing new features that are unmet benefits desired by customers, you can re-position and change the game.

To Do Now:

1. Re-evaluate the market dynamics –is your market more competitive, stagnant and growing quickly?

2. Understand what competition is in your market, have new competitors entered, others left? What are their key benefits and how do they position themselves?

3. Review your position and messages—are they still differentiated from the competition? Are they still meaningful to your target audience?

4. Create new positioning if necessary. Review your messages. Do they support your position? Does your audience care? Are they relevant and compelling?

.*The terms Trailblazers, Leap Frog, War Games and Beat The Clock are copywrited methodologies of the Hyde Park Group, Chicago, IL. Based on article written by Highland Team and The Hyde Park Group.