We live in a world where consumers are presented with multiple products to choose from. Their choices are however determined by the distinctive position a brand occupies in their minds. But how to find a window in their mind for the acceptance of your product is a fundamental question every manufacturer has to answer before launching a product into the market. From experience, strategic brand positioning laced with psychological basics is the answer you need for your brand to own a mental space in their heart.

Getting an answer to this question is probably relieving but not enough for your brand to succeed without you having a clear insight of the term (brand positioning). This is because, most literatures flooding the internet today use this term interchangeably with concept like product packaging, which is a misinterpretation that limits its importance.
Here I will try to strip the concept open for the benefit of marketers and business owners who before now have been mistaking it for something else.

To simply put, brand positioning is the summation of all the marketing processes associated with shaping the value proposition of your brand to improve customers’ experience as well as making it stand out of the crowd. One can say, in its purest form, it is the process of positioning a brand in customers’ mind.

Positioning is the way you want your product to be perceived by your customers. It is responsible for how customers react when they come in contact with your product by dealing directly their emotions.

Again, it is important to note that brand positioning is not narrow in scope as most think. Rather, it is deep and essential to the survival of every business in this age; a science and psychology combined to pave a way for your business to triumph.

Brand positioning as a marketing mix creates long lasting impression and serves as a wing through which promotional messages (features and benefit) of a brand are ideally communicated to the target audience with the aim of transforming them into bunch of loyal customers.
How consumers relate to your product is determined by how appealing it appears and the voice through which its features and benefits are communicated to them----and this solely depends on your brand positioning tactics.

If your brand positioning strategy is built upon a solid foundation, consumers are likely to make favorable buying decisions and become voluntary ambassadors of your business. For example, a company like Nike has registered its imprint in the minds of its target audience consistently through various brand positioning channels ranging from their name, logo, adverts, product design, stake holder’s input, packaging and many more.

Coca-Cola is another example of a company who have hit the mark of success overtime by adopting a dynamic and sound brand positioning strategy.

There is no magic behind why some business fail while some forge over the years to become industry giant. The difference between the two is that the former were ignorant of undertaking research on how best to project their brand’s image while the latter did the reverse.
Having touch-lighted few points on why strategic brand positioning is ultimate, before launching a new product into the market, embark on a detailed research and develop a sound brand positioning model.

By Mark Godswill