Simply put, brand positioning is the process of getting your target audience to know your brand and associate it with specific characteristics and attributes. It’s more than a mission statement. It’s a strategy used to set your engineering company apart from your competitors.
Our challenge as B2B marketers and business leaders is to distinctly position and message our company, products and services in a way that builds credibility and trust, differentiates, and effectively resonates with our buyer personas.
Going through the process of brand positioning and messaging can be difficult and time-consuming, and therefore, it’s often skipped. However, it's critical to an effective B2B marketing program and successful business.
In this post, we’ll guide you through the framework we use to develop your brand position within your target market.
It’s important to first document your company’s mission, vision and core values. These core elements serve as the foundation for your company's positioning statement. Below are brief definitions and examples to reference in writing yours.
A mission statement is a brief written statement of the fundamental purpose of a company or organization that rarely changes through the decades.
Examples of Mission Statements:
A vision statement is a long-term dream that states what your company wants to be, serves as a source of inspiration, and is sometimes time-based and updated every 10-15 years.
Examples of Vision Statements:
Your company’s core values are the fundamental beliefs and expected behaviors of your company.
Examples of Core Values:
With your foundation clearly defined in your mission, vision, and core values, the next step to brand positioning is to create a company positioning statement that describes what you do, who you do it for, and what differentiates you from others in the market.
Often, teams skip this step and dive right into creating messaging statements and value propositions. Don’t be that team – take the time to document, debate and agree on your company or product position before you get to messaging.
Developing a brand positioning statement helps you clearly define your company and your audience by articulating customer concerns and the unique solutions your company delivers. And once you’ve created your positioning statement, it can help align your organization on a single message, increase efficiency when creating content, and ensure consistency within that content.
Let’s get started creating your brand positioning statement.
Quickly write down a couple of sentences that describe the uniqueness of your company—not one of your products or services but your company—and what sets it apart from your competition. Don’t overthink it; don’t take more than a minute or two to write these sentences.
Reading your description, does your company sound unique or does it sound like other companies similar to yours? Was your description easy to write? Do you like what you wrote? Do you think others inside and outside your company would agree with what you wrote? Does it match what’s on your website? If you answered no to even one of these questions, your corporate positioning statement may need some attention. The following framework and brand positioning questions can help.
First, define the following elements of your positioning statement. We use this framework day in and day out at TREW and it is a very useful tool to guide you to the right words, phrases, and tone that will uniquely position our clients in the market. When you are going through these, be as specific and focused as possible.
The first two parts of your positioning statement are “Who” and “Where”. These two steps are very quick and easy if you already have your buyer personas defined.
Who: Your potential customer’s job title, function, decision-making authority, etc.
Examples of “Who”:
Where: The industry(ies), region(s), department(s), division(s), etc. of the types of companies where your potential customers work.
Examples of “Where”:
The next two parts of your positioning statement are “Why” and “What”, which focus on your customer’s pain points or application challenges and what you offer to solve it.
Why: Your customer’s technical challenges or pain points.
Examples of “Why”:
What: Your solutions, including products, services or overall solutions.
Examples of “What”:
The last two parts of your positioning statement are “How” and “Unlike”, where you get into more detail about your unique approach or offerings and how they are superior to competitors or alternatives.
How: The way you solve your customer’s problem, such as processes, tools, service, unique expertise, and best practices.
Examples of “How”:
Unlike: The drawbacks of alternative approaches such as competitors, using in-house resources, or delaying resolution. While some words, phrases or even whole sentences from other parts of the positioning statement may end up being used publicly, the “Unlike” section is only meant for internal use.
Examples of “Unlike”:
Think beyond your current customers and projects when identifying these elements of your positioning statement. Brainstorm the applications for which you want to build products or deliver services with your ideal engineering customers in mind.
Consider the following questions:
This requires plenty of introspection and sometimes outside research. Query your company stakeholders, including key customers if possible, via a questionnaire or short interviews to learn what others think about your company. Answers to these questions can serve as great conversation starters for your leadership team to delve into, debate, and ultimately use to create each of your positioning statement elements.
Going step-by- step through this positioning process leads to a well thought out, carefully crafted positioning statement that you can use on your website, in your content, and as talking point for your sales team. From that statement, you can create a shorter elevator pitch that all your employees can use to clearly describe who your company is, what customer pains you are solving, and how you are uniquely differentiated from competitors to solve those challenges. This will ensure that your company will be delivering the same message in every interaction with your target audiences, and will serve as a critical first step to establishing your brand.
A large percentage of B2B websites have similar positioning to the effect of: We offer innovative, products/services/solutions to our clients.
So does everyone else. Tell me more:
Put your stake in the ground. Don’t be afraid to be bold or narrow. So many clients say they want to but then end up watering their position statement down. You must focus on your largest area of opportunity and broaden from there.
Don't use flashy words and jargon in your positioning. You want your customers to understand exactly what you do based off your branding. Use simple words and phrases that convey what you do while resonating with your audience.
It is very hard to take a step back and look at your company from the outside. Many companies use their own internal terminology and assume that the audience understands what they are saying. The audience’s knowledge could vary greatly and you need to make sure you keep that in mind when developing your positioning statement.
Some companies have a great positioning statement but only use it for their boiler plate on a news release. Your positioning statement should be the basis for all of your marketing content. It should be repurposed over and over again.
Once all of the elements of your positioning statement are complete, you can identify the tone of your brand and communicate it in a voice that reflects your corporate culture and personality.
“Tone” is the mood or feeling if your brand, while “voice” is the style of your writing. For a highly technical company like system integrator, Vertech, their tone is fun, while still speaking to technical professors.
Do you want to be like IBM – professional, experienced and serious? Or more like Apple – simple, informal, and high quality. Once you establish your tone of voice, you need to stick with it. Be true to who you are in all you do – online, in your sales presentations, in your trade show booths.
To develop your brand tone, here’s a few easy and fun questions to get lots of ideas on the table:
Considering the answers to the above questions – i.e., the car your company would be and the brands your company wants to emulate – review all the words captured in the above question, and select the 3-5 that best capture the brand tone your company wants to have.
Here is a list of tone and voice examples that can help you brainstorm and explore what defines your brand:
If you’ve evaluated your brand positioning and messaging after reading this post and realized that you need to rethink your branding, let’s take a minute to set your expectations for the process.
To end with messaging that clearly pinpoints and relates to your target audience, defines what you do and how you’re different, and conveys tone and voice, you can expect the following from TREW Marketing:
Time: Expect that this process will take 5-8 weeks
Team: You’ll need to create a Branding Committee with a total of 3-5 people. These people should know your company’s core purpose, vision, products/services, and audience. They will also become your brand ambassadors who know the brand from top to bottom when the process is over. If your high-level executives are removed from your target audience, consider including a lower-level engineering director who has specific insight into your audience and their pains, and who will be a strong brand ambassador.
Process: There will likely be homework before the process starts and then a kickoff that can last from 2-4 hours. The messaging will go through multiple drafts, each discussed as a group with TREW Marketing and your internal Branding Committee. Much information is gleaned from these discussions, and the TREW team comes armed with questions and research. Sometimes clients wish to add in additional competitor research or customer interviews to fully understand the market or audience they’re working with.
Final Deliverables: Once the reviews are complete, every positioning and messaging project includes a positioning statement, corporate pitch, and final “About Us” content that’s ready for your website. Optional deliverables include a tagline, pitches for specific audience, or industry segments, corporate pitch decks, and specific product or service messaging.
Learn more about brand positioning and messaging development by watching our on-demand webinar, Storytelling for Technical Brands.
TREW is a marketing agency dedicated to reaching engineering and technical audiences through a range of marketing initiatives. Contact us today to learn more about the services we offer.