Positioning is not what you do to the product. It is what you do to the mind of the prospect.
Al Ries and Jack Trout.
Positioning is no doubt the single most important aspect of marketing in the globally competitive market place. With capitalism gaining popularity in most countries of the world, competition has increased greatly. A company not only needs to fight rivals in the local market. It also has to equip itself to compete against the world’s best.
Companies are improving their products and offering them at competitive prices. A good quality product is no longer a guarantee for success. A product has to have a clear and distinctive image in the mind of the customer. This is exactly what positioning creates.
Since positioning has more to do with the customer’s perception, a marketer should take care about how effectively the positioning message is communicated to the end user or the prospective user. Positioning has to be managed at every point where the customer comes in contact with the company, from personal sales to online communication to telephonic interaction. This is the only effective way of avoiding any confusion about the product in the mind of the customer.
Through positioning the company must basically answer three questions:
What are the distinctive strengths of your company?
Who are your customers and how your product will provide value to them?
How is your offering different from what your competitors are offering in ways that your customers will value?
These three questions put together results in the central idea of positioning i.e., what is your unique selling proposition?
Positioning starts with the company deciding about how many ideas to stress inorder to formulate a positioning message. A company could aspire to be the product leader, the customer intimate firm or operationally excellent firm. To form a successful positioning strategy a company must aspire to be best at one or all of the three value disciplines.
Once a company decides what ideas to stress in positioning, it must start to communicate the message to the customer at every contact point.
At every stage of positioning the customers’ view point is critical. Asking customers about their expectations from your product can prove beneficial in formulating a successful positioning strategy. It may be different from what the internal sources in the company think or perceive. Taking inputs from outsiders gives new insights to the marketer and enables him to have a holistic view of the subject.
A company also needs to know itself well before it starts telling others what it has to offer. This means developing core competencies. Positioning helps companies to give a direction to their marketing plan. It gives the customer a central idea of what the product is all about.
However positioning is only the beginning of the marketing cycle. Once a company has decided what image it wants its product to convey, it has to be followed up by similar practices. A company has to live the image created by its positioning statement throughout its life cycle.
Notes:
1. A framework for Marketing Management Second Edition Philip Kotler.
2. http://www.bigpictureperspective.com/articles/ImportanceOfPositioning.html
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