3 Signs You are Having a Brand Positioning Crisis and How to Fix it
A strong brand positioning allows your customers to understand the difference you’re about to make in their lives. Customers fully connected to a brand have been shown to be 52% more valuable than satisfied customers. And when that connection intersects with emotion, the potential is even more dramatic. Customers who have an emotional connection with a brand demonstrate a 306% higher chance of committing to that brand throughout their entire lifetime[1].
But content strategies often fail because they are not guided by a clear brand positioning statement. A key internal tool, brand positioning statements ensure that your marketing campaigns stay aligned with your core values by reminding your team about the specificities of your audience and the difference you are trying to make.
Here are three signs that you might be facing a brand positioning crisis:
1. Your team is misaligned
A revealing internal test is to ask your teams or close collaborators what difference they are making in the lives of your clients. By giving team members just three sentences to describe the specific impact the company has, it becomes easy to see if the same benefits are mentioned repeatedly and by everyone. Team members may make accurate statements about how the company enhances their clients’ lives, but it’s more important that they are aligned and share beliefs.
Does this sound extreme?
It isn’t. The effort it takes the average brand to penetrate the noise in the marketplace is considerable, and your team is your foremost asset for establishing your brand’s voice. Moreover, team members that refer to a brand or company in dissimilar ways quickly create a diluting effect and squander a key branding opportunity. So, lack of team alignment is potentially a serious sign that your brand is facing a positioning crisis.
2. Existing customers don’t understand the value your brand is adding to their lives
Every business wants to believe that its current clients are engaged and enjoy a high level of satisfaction. But your client pool and the constructive feedback they provide can be a rich resource for brand growth. Many businesses overestimate the extent to which their existing and longstanding clients know the range of offerings they provide while also underestimating the difficulty existing customers may have communicating the positive impact their brand makes.
Why is this a problem?
It can be an appreciable problem when it comes to the ease with which current clients offer referrals. Your existing customers should be able to articulate clearly the benefits of the brand they invest in. For example:
“This company makes my life easier by streamlining my financial records”
Or…
“This brand makes a difference in my life because it helps me protect the environment”.
Ensuring current clients understand the added value of your brand can help with retention and referrals.
3. You’re trying to be everything to everyone
If you’re saying “yes” to everything, you are potentially facing a brand positioning crisis. It’s an approach that typically means your strategy is oriented toward “pleasing” rather than taking a clear position and establishing a distinctive voice in the marketplace. Adopting a concise, targeted brand positioning strategy might not appeal to every potential customer, but the audience it engages with represents a true opportunity for meaningful connection. The process may feel counterintuitive — it’s natural for a business to want to be the solution for everyone. But brand positioning keeps companies honest and allows them to take a genuine stance instead of attempting to be a little bit of everything to everyone.
How can you avert the crisis?
Even a small brand positioning problem is worth fixing, and most organisations feel their brand positioning could be stronger even if not facing a crisis. The first step in addressing any issue is by deconstructing the brand positioning statement into a formula that incorporates four components.
- The Audience: what is their demographic? What are their pain points?
- The Market: what market category is relevant to the brand?
- The Brand Promise: what are the brand’s greatest benefits in the eyes of the audience?
- The Evidence: what verifiable evidence is there that the brand delivers on its promise?
Achieving a strong level of clarity when developing and refining a brand positioning statement will provide direction to all your content marketing efforts.
[1] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-retail-study-shows-marketers-under-leverage-emotional-connection-300720049.html