Most businesses that rely on selling products will work hard at market positioning. In fact there are many experts that would claim that success is impossible without this. We live in a world where there is a lot of competition for almost every product or service you can think of. In order for there to be any chance of success a business will need to be able to find their spot in the market. Unless this is something that is done consciously then performing well will be an upward struggle. These days all the top businesses put a lot of effort into getting their market positioning strategy right; in fact most will invest a lot of money into this.
So What is Market Positioning?
Market positioning is all about finding a way to get customers to develop a positive view of a product. It is all about branding and marketing a product in such a way as it appeals to those people most likely to buy the product. A fine example of market positioning is Apple computers as they have been able to do this with multiple products. In order to have any chance at market positioning it is vital to understand the people that the business is trying to sell to. In those situations where market positioning fails it is almost always because the business misread the market.
Market positioning is a real balancing act because by trying to attract some customers it might occur that you lose some of your existing customers. A good example of this is when an exclusive brand decides to start marketing to those customers who are after cheap deals. This new attempt at market positioning will likely mean that many of those who choose the brand because of exclusivity will abandon ship. A business has to think hard about the effects of any change they make to market positioning; it can involve losses as well as gains.
Market positioning is usually an evolving process. This is because most businesses will have more than one product or service on offer, and they will also usually want to target different groups. These changes to the market positioning need to occur in a calculated way so as not to damage the overall brand image; especially as this can take years to create.
How Businesses Decide on Market Positioning
In a large company market positioning will usually fall under the umbrella of research and development. In smaller companies though it might just be up to the manager and his team to decide on how they are going to approach things. No matter what the size of the business though, it is important that there is thought given to this topic. When we don’t know who our intended customer is and what they want from us it can be like shooting in the dark. There are plenty of good books and articles available on this subject and they are certainly well worth checking out if you are unsure about your own market positioning strategy.
