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Craft Winning Positioning Statements: Examples & Tips

Learn the key components to writing a brand positioning statement. Follow these tips and examples when you go to write your own.

If you meet someone new, and they ask you about your brand, what would you tell them? As a business owner, you know your business identity inside and out. You are immersed in your brand every day. But, how often do you sit down and really think about what other people see when they come across your brand in person or online? Do you have a statement describing your brand and how you'd like for it to be perceived by the public?

A crucial aspect of your business marketing strategy is to create a brand identity as well as to understand the unique value that your brand brings to users. Since you're likely operating within a competitive market, consider what gives your brand its competitive edge. Why should your ideal customers choose your brand instead of your competition?

To make your brand distinctive, you need a concise positioning statement that clearly communicates your identity and core goals to both your internal teams and your customers. This statement summarizes your brand identity and outlines the key benefit your brand delivers. This essential tool is known as a positioning statement.

With an effective positioning statement, the next time someone asks you about your brand, you have an answer ready. Having a positioning statement is essential for all brands. It doesn't matter what industry your business is in. Brand positioning statements guide a brand regardless of your market category or niche. It helps your brand achieve consistency, guide strategic marketing strategies, and deliver a better overall customer experience.

What is a positioning statement?

A brand positioning statement acts as an anchor or foundation for all of your branding and marketing. It's a clear statement summarizing your product positioning and how your offerings fulfill your target customers' needs.

All of your branding, logo, ads, signage, and packaging are based on your positioning statement. It creates a solid business identity, providing an overarching theme that highlights your brand’s core values, passion for innovation, or commitment to operational excellence and customer obsession.

At its core, your positioning statement summarizes the unique value and specific benefits that your target customers can expect. Essentially, it clearly communicates your brand’s value proposition, guiding both business transactions and ongoing interactions with your customers.

Key Parts of a Positioning Statement

What are the essential aspects of positioning every effective positioning statement should have? Without these elements, your positioning statement is incomplete.

Target Audience

Understanding your target customers is critical when creating an amazing positioning statement. Ask yourself:

  • Who are the ideal customers who will benefit most from my product?
  • What demographic (age, gender, household income, style, interests, etc.) will my brand resonate with?
  • Where can I connect with this audience to gain valuable audience insights?
  • How can I use these insights to develop targeted marketing strategies?

It's crucial to deeply understand your ideal customers, their mindset, and their specific needs. Clearly defining your target customers will help inform how your products can significantly enhance their customer experience.

Value Proposition

Another essential element of your concise positioning statement is the value proposition or unique selling proposition. A value proposition defines the unique benefits your customers gain from your product or service. Answer these questions to pinpoint your value proposition:

  • What makes your business idea truly unique?
  • How do your products uniquely fulfill your target customers' needs?
  • Why is your brand superior to others in your competitive market?
  • What key benefit differentiates your brand and provides genuine value?
  • What specific advantage or value sets your brand apart?

Understanding these factors helps your audience make informed decisions and recognize why your brand offers unmatched value.

Competitive Advantage

What provides your brand with a distinct competitive edge in your niche or market category? Your competitive advantage is what positions your brand favorably compared to competitors. Consider the following:

  • What makes your product positioning genuinely unique?
  • Why is your offer more compelling compared to competitors?
  • How can your brand leverage competitive intelligence to outperform rivals?
  • What insights have you gained through detailed competitor analysis?
  • How does your brand's positioning align with insights from your market assessment?

Answering these questions allows you to effectively communicate your competitive advantages, enhancing your overall brand appeal and boosting your conversion rate.

Branding

Creating a brand strategy and brand identity is crucial for all businesses, whether they’re service providers, manufacturers, or online retailers. Effective branding creates a recognizable identity that your audience associates with your business or product line.

Your branding strategy should be consistently reflected across your company logo, visual design, brand mission, and all customer-facing interactions, promoting your brand’s core values, passion for innovation, and commitment to delight customers.

To develop robust branding, ask yourself:

  • How do my ideal customers perceive my brand?
  • Does my logo accurately represent my business identity?
  • What visuals align best with our business marketing strategy?
  • What emotions and experiences do customers associate with our brand?
  • Do our brand interactions consistently provide operational excellence and customer obsession?
  • How closely aligned is our branding with our stated mission?

Conducting periodic A/B testing can ensure your branding resonates with customers as intended. Once you clearly define your target audience, value proposition, competitive advantage, and branding, you’ll be ready to craft a compelling product positioning statement.

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5 tips to craft a strong statement

Once you are ready to start crafting a positioning statement for your brand, here are some tips to get you started.

1. Learn how your brand fits into your industry

Unless you are the first business to sell a specific product or service to anyone, you are entering an established industry. A good rule of thumb is to consider how your company compares to the industry as a whole, starting with the history of the industry.

Businesses aren't created in a vacuum. They are initiated to answer a need that has come to light within a niche or specific industry. Many customers already have a relationship with the industry you are entering. Therefore, it's helpful to learn about traditions and established practices in the industry that customers have come to expect.

Then, with this knowledge in hand, you can decide how you can fit in with the industry while providing something new that customers are asking for. A thorough understanding of the industry and industry leaders will help you find your feet and fulfill a need that is currently neglected. The better you know your industry, the better you will be able to position your brand within it.

2. Know your brand inside and out

A key factor in crafting a positioning statement is to know everything there is about your brand. This means everything. Make sure you know:

  • Who is the owner of the business?
  • Why did they start the business?
  • What is the background of the person or people who started the company?
  • What is the goal of the brand?
  • What is the ideal result that a user will have when using the brand?
  • How does your product operate and do you supply everything needed for its use?
  • What makes your brand special in the marketplace?

If you are an expert on your brand, then you will better understand how to position it as compared to other brands in the industry.

3. Prove that your brand meets your expectations

There's nothing worse than creating a brand that your product can't live up to. All of the hope that customers have regarding your product will turn into disappointment. Therefore, before you demonstrate your product to potential users, make sure that your product works without fail and meets the expectations set by your branding.

Next, you will need to assemble proof of your claims about the product and how it differs from the rest of the industry. You need to prepare how to explain to customers why your product is the best and whatever you claim your brand can do.

4. Keep it short

If your positioning statement is too long, you will lose your audience. Keep it short and to the point. A positioning statement should be one or three sentences or phrases. No more than that.

5. Make sure it says what you want

Once your positioning statement is crafted, make sure it says what you want it to. It must be clear and concise and reflect your brand's core values. Using your positioning statement as the foundation, you should be able to make clear decisions about your brand that reflect your brand's position.

Position statement examples

Let's look at some examples of positioning statements that established companies use across various industries to show that regardless of who a business is targeting and what industry they are in, they all include the same key components in their statements.

Mailchimp

To start, let's look at Mailchimp's positioning statement:

Mailchimp is an all-in-one Marketing Platform for small businesses. We empower millions of customers around the world to start and grow their businesses with our smart marketing technology, award-winning support, and inspiring content.

As you can see, our statement says exactly what is needed for users to understand what we do. It describes what we are—an all-in-one marketing platform. And what we do for customers—empower millions of customers around the world to start and grow their businesses. And how we do it—using smart marketing technology, award-winning support, and inspiring content.

The style of the statement is friendly and encouraging, giving customers confidence in working with Mailchimp.

Nike

Here is Nike's positioning statement:

For athletes in need of high-quality, fashionable athletic wear, Nike provides customers with top-performing sports apparel and shoes made of the highest quality materials. Its products are the most advanced in the athletic apparel industry because of Nike's commitment to innovation and investment in the latest technologies.

With this statement, Nike has clearly defined its brand as one that is for serious athletes—for athletes in need of high-quality, fashionable athletic wear. Nike's product is top of the line—Nike provides customers with top-performing sports apparel and shoes. And the brand is innovative—its products are the most advanced in the athletic apparel industry because of Nike's commitment to innovation.

Customers looking for durable, high-performing, and fashionable athletic wear are sure to look to Nike due to this positioning statement. The statement offers confidence in current products and future products moving forward because of its focus on innovation.

Apple

Now, let's take a look at Apple's positioning statement:

Apple emphasizes technological research and advancement and takes an innovative approach to business best practices — it considers the impact our products and processes have on its customers and the planet.

Apple's positioning statement offers insight into its business strategy with a broader focus. It focuses on Apple's forward-thinking research and development—Apple emphasizes technological research and advancement. And the statement emphasizes its innovation—takes an innovative approach to business best practices. Then it steps outside the box by declaring that Apple is aware of its impact.

Apple's impact can be viewed in more than one way. It can include the impact on people that use Apple devices. It also notes their impact on the planet. This emphasis is very appealing to Apple's target market. They tend to be more progressive than the general population and therefore concerned with their carbon footprint.

Apple is a company that understands exactly who they are selling to and what that audience values, including innovative products and a reduction of their environmental impact.

Airbnb

When it launched, Airbnb offered a unique service to its audience with this positioning statement:

For local and international travelers, Airbnb is the only booking website that connects you to unique experiences all over the world because we offer the largest selection, most diverse, top-rated and personalized places to stay.

Airbnb offered a new way to travel, targeted primarily to millennials. It was for travelers from anywhere on the globe—for local and international travelers. And they exclusively offered unique travel experiences—the only booking website that connects you to unique experiences. They featured global, diverse, personalized places to stay—we offer the largest selection, most diverse, top-rated, and personalized places to stay. Airbnb lays out its target audience, value proposition, and competitive advantage clearly.

Millennials have grown up with personalized online services, and their travel plans reflect that. With a clear target market, Airbnb gives travelers a peek into travel destinations that most people never see while having lower prices than many hotels and resorts. This new concept of travel has grown with new companies joining the niche.

Coca-Cola

For individuals looking for high-quality beverages, Coca-Cola offers a wide range of the most refreshing options — each creates a positive experience for customers when they enjoy a Coca-Cola brand drink. Unlike other beverage options, Coca-Cola products inspire happiness and make a positive difference in customers' lives, and the brand is intensely focused on the needs of consumers and customers.

Coca-Cola is a well-established brand with visual recognition worldwide. It has a wide target audience and offers emotions as well as flavor to its customers. Their products are refreshing—Coca-Cola offers a wide range of the most refreshing options. Drinking Coke is a positive experience—a positive experience for customers when they enjoy a Coca-Cola brand drink. They engender good feelings—inspire happiness and make a positive difference in customers' lives.

Coca-Cola has the benefit of being a well-known brand with an established history that is recognized pretty much anywhere. Even when the product is in another language, it is easy to identify the logo and branding. Coke doesn't define itself as just a refreshing drink, Coke defines its brand as one that brings positivity and happiness to all of its customers.

Make your position known

By crafting a position statement, you give your brand a voice. You can create marketing materials that are unified behind a single theme, and give your customers a desirable way to perceive your brand and product.

Using your positioning statement as an anchor or guide, you can project the brand identity that you want customers to see in everything you do to market and produce your product. This includes your brand logo, website, advertisements, packaging, shipping, and anything else your brand uses.

Audio and video commercials can all reflect back to your brand while giving users the impression of your brand that you want them to see. This creates a cohesive, focused presentation of your branding that is reiterated by each step you take and each marketing campaign you have.

Mailchimp offers numerous tools and services to help you achieve and promote your brand position. While they are best known for their email marketing service, they also have numerous other services, including:

All of these services can help you create and promote your brand identity and positioning statement.

Key Takeaways

  • A brand positioning statement summarizes what your products or services are and how they meet your target audience's needs, acting as a foundation for all branding and marketing efforts.
  • Essential elements of a positioning statement include target audience, value proposition, competitive advantage, and branding.
  • Successful positioning statements from companies like Nike, Apple, and Airbnb highlight their unique strengths and how they meet the needs of their specific audiences.
  • Consistency in branding, reflected through logos, advertisements, packaging, and customer interactions, can boost revenue by 10-20%, demonstrating the importance of a cohesive brand identity.

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