Brand Positioning - Marty Marion - masterpositioning.com

Dallas TX

27 May, 2021

12:43 PM

Description

Why Positioning Just Isn't Enough Anymore When drawing out your marketing plan, it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture and focus specifically on your brand or your business. It's what you put a majority of your time into cultivating and growing, and ultimately what you’re trying to promote using SEO techniques, so it makes sense that focusing on your own rankings comes naturally. For a decent amount of time this was enough to increase traffic, but these days when rankings are more competitive than ever, it just isn’t anymore. In order to really get the growth you’re looking for, in addition to positioning it’s imperative to practice de-positioning techniques as well. As effective as both positioning and de-positioning can be on their own, when they really shine is when you use them in unison. Being able to simultaneously dictate what your market thinks of your brand through positioning, and dissuade them from choosing your competitors through de-positioning is a recipe for success. They’re like grilled cheese and tomato soup, fine separately if not a little boring, but a whole new experience when combined. Any time a consumer makes a search or looks for a product, they have to make a choice. Since most people usually click the first 3 links from a google search, this is usually between brands A, B, and C. From here, they have to make a competitive comparison and then make their decision based on it. You could have the greatest benefits in the world and be ranked #1, but if your consumer has loyalty to another brand, or was recommended by a close friend, or thinks they’re just better, none of that is going to get them to change their mind. There are other methods for trying to overcome this, such as giving your brand a distinguishing feature to set yourself apart, or using different selling techniques to try and draw them in, but a decent amount of the time that isn’t enough to overcome preconceived preferences. This is exactly where de-positioning comes into play. If positioning is the carrot, de-positioning is the stick. It’s not enough to give positive impressions of your brand, you have to also convince your market that your competitor can’t provide the service or product that they need. There are two main ways to do this; implanting a sense of doubt about your competitor, or stirring up dissatisfaction in their product or service. If you’re able to do either of these successfully, then you have a chance of bringing the customer over to your brand using regular positioning techniques. Just like positioning, de-positioning is a tool to help differentiate your business from the rest of the market. This isn’t a technique to be “the best” or to get your competitors to be “the worst”, it's about being better. When the A, B, or C decision has to be made, if C is even slightly better than the norm and A and B are slightly worse, C is much more likely to be chosen. Although going after specific businesses is a valid technique and has its place, it’s more effective to de-position on a larger scale. Why go after just one competitor, especially when rankings can change any day, when you can take them all out at once? The more you look for it, the more you see this technique in all kinds of marketing, from slogans to product descriptions to taglines. For example, MasterCard’s slogan, “There are some things money can’t buy. For everything else, there’s MasterCard.” simultaneously instills a sense of doubt that cash or other cards might not always be usable, then promotes their brand as being the only way to distill that fear. Even something as subtle as Bounty’s “The Quicker Picker Upper” brings into question the speed and effectiveness of other brands of paper towels. Using techniques like this to promote your brand will show results because they’re the same advertising techniques that big brands have used for years, rebranded for SEO marketing. Do your research, look into your market. Find what people are complaining about and any potential weaknesses in your competition's brand and use that as a starting point to de-position them and cast doubt on their product or service. Discrediting your competitors while promoting yourself is the key to finding the balance between positioning and de-positioning, and if you’re able to find that balance, your numbers will reflect it.