Brand Positioning Statements

May 28, 2020

How do I craft a brand positioning statement?

Positioning statements succinctly and quickly describe a brand's purpose and aesthetic — and how it effectively fills a particular need of the company's target market. Unlike a mission statement or a vision statement, a brand positioning statement is an internal tool that aligns marketing efforts with the brand and value proposition.

Well-designed positioning statements help crystallize what makes your brand uniquely distinctive, ensuring that you create real, lasting connections with your target(s). Listening to your customers can inform how to position your brand through surveys, data analyzation, and social listening through media. This allows you to curate and understand your consumer and the voice your brand needs to emulate.

Securian Financial, for example, achieved this by mapping their mindset - unpretentious, security-oriented, debt-averse - to a consumer segment with the same traits.

The company described what helped position the brand, recommending to focus on priorities: "Creating priorities to work against helps make this process easier, such as identity, brand promise, target customer mindset, purpose statement, core values, trust, and community." The brand gained high praise from stakeholders for employee engagement and sales growth and shared how it turned what has been a competitive disadvantage into a differentiator.

The Ask the Expert research team has curated best practices and a variety of case studies below.

Brand Positioning Statement Best Practices

Tips for Crafting a Clear and Compelling Brand Positioning. ANA Event Recap.
A competitive brand positioning defines who the target audience is, what the brand's business scope is, and how it creates value for customers. It provides strategic guidance on product development, pricing, and messaging. Denise Lee Yohn explored how marketers can develop an easy-to-use framework for a positioning statement, find the most effective way to identify and define target segments, as well as identify three strategies to establish meaningful and lasting differentiation from competition. Examples from Zipcar and other brands are included in the accompanying deck.

How to Write a Brand Positioning Statement That Demands Attention and Sets You Apart. Fabrik.
This report explores what brand positioning is and isn't, and includes questions to ask yourself and how to refine your brand's positioning statement.

A Brand Is A Promise: Three Steps To Determine A Brand's Positioning Statement. Forbes Communications Council.
A brand can be positioned by its features (e.g., shoes: unique rubber), its functional benefits (the ability to jump higher), emotional benefits (to feel empowered) or by an extraordinary quality (athletic success). When developing your brand positioning statement, the author recommends using a three-step model that was developed in the packaged goods industry.

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Brand Positioning Statement Template

Positioning Statement Worksheet. ANA, 2018
This worksheet will help you define a positioning statement that describes your product, defines its differentiation, and how you can create value for customers. Instructions on using the worksheet below.

Examples

CarMax: Shaping a Brand with Transparency, Honesty, and Integrity. ANA Event Recap.
CarMax shared how they adapted the brand's positioning to one that better communicated its promise of transparency during the entire car-buying experience. The new positioning below comes from the presentation deck.

Craft a Positioning Statement with This Template & Examples. HubSpot.
Examples and case studies from brands are included in the report from Coca-Cola, Amazon, Alaska Airlines, Nike, Apple, McDonald's, Beautycounter, Thrive Market, and HubSpot itself.
Marketing Shoes to Entrepreneurs. ANA Event Recap.
Tennis shoe maker K-Swiss described how it sought a brand positioning that didn't rely on sports or entertainment.

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Explore content to access best practices, case studies, and marketing tools. Our proprietary content includes Event Recaps, which share actionable insights from conference and committee presentations.
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