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Unless you position yourself for top mind experience, you condemn your product or service for an out of mind experience. In short, you position yourself for oblivion! Positioning is about how you rate compared with your competition. Every business has a competitive positioning and this can be negative, positive or neutral. Positioning revolves around the differentiation issues such as slogans, logos, advertising, signage and much more. It involves more than communication issues. It contains strategic decisions on pricing, placing, distribution, promotion and product features. If you are fortunate enough to have a distinctive product, that alone can give you a competitive advantage. For example, the shape of the Coca-Cola bottle gives this brand an advantage that is legally protected against competitive infringement. Engineering features may also give a product a competitive advantage. For many years we were involved in the strategic marketing of a bearings firm. Our market research indicated that the most prized feature of these bearings was their engineering quality that translated to longer performing bearings. From this standing it was easy to design a communications slogan and positioning statement - "The Performance Rolls On & On..." The engineering quality of products can also provide vital clues about its target audience. With bearings, the target audience was industrial and engineering processes that prized longer lasting parts and were often prepared to pay a premium for such parts. With some products/categories, communications may be the major source of differentiation. If you strip brand and positioning from butter, margarine or washing detergents you get very homogenised ingredients. Sometimes the location or distribution venue may give products their major point of differentiation. CarLovers Carwash is positioned in high traffic thoroughfares to take advantage of passing trade, AVON repositioned from "door to door" to "office to office" to take advantage of the increasing number of women returning to the workforce. With services, the processes form the basis for positioning statements. For example, the process of filling in compliance taxation returns has been positioned on the basis of price and convenience - ITP-convenience-mobile tax services. TIPS FOR EFFECTIVE POSITIONING
Maria Charlton B Com MBA AFAMI CPM
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