With your own core values and those of your company now clearly established or reaffirmed and woven into your mission statement (see related article: Brand Matters), it’s an excellent time to assess or reassess the positioning of your brand.
At this point, think also about what you have to offer that’s unique. What is so different and better, or can be presented as such, than anything anyone else is offering? You need to have this differentiation clear in your own mind and be able to position your company to your market in a way that separates you from and lifts you above your strongest competitor.
What do you know about your competition?
You need to be thoroughly aware of what is already on offer in the form of active competition. (There is also passive competition - inertia/lack of perceived need/lack of awareness of your product, service or solution within your target market, the "so what?" factor, but that's a different issue.).
Let’s look at some of the ways you can you find out more about your competitors:
a) Do you subscribe to a printed or electronic trade journal for your industry?
b) Are you a member of your industry’s association or trade body?
c) Do you send delegates to conferences?
d) Do you read the financial and business pages in the national press in order to be generally aware of what’s happening in the world of business?
e) If you exhibited at or visited a show or exhibition recently do you have the catalogue of exhibitors? What notes did you make on industry trends and specific exhibitor activities and innovations that may affect your potential to compete with them?
f) What about the Internet? - Never before has so much information been available so easily and immediately - you can quickly and easily check out your competitors’ web sites.
What is their positioning? Their unique selling proposition? How do they differentiate themselves from other players in the market?
Don’t allow yourself to become complacent; you need to be constantly on the look out for new players entering the market, as well as new moves from existing players. Armed with the answers to the previous questions you can hone and differentiate your own positioning and protect your own unique selling proposition.
Action Points:
1) Note how they position themselves and their unique selling points and value propositions.
2) Look at your own.
3) Don’t fight your competitors on the same points - You should never be seen to be the same as the competition because if you are, you will each be perceived as just a commodity and the prospect company will buy on price.
4) Keep developing the differentiation that separates you from and lifts you above your strongest competitor.
5) Make it easy for a prospect to favourably differentiate your company’s offer from that of your competitors.
This article is an extract from our Comfort Zone courses at www.sellingforbusiness.com
Brand Positioning - To learn more about this author, visit Linda Mattacks's Website.
Like this article? Share it with your friends
 |
Related Articles |
|
Develop Your Positioning Statements
|
| |
Your positioning statement is used in literature, your website, and other sales materials. It should capture how you are positioned versus your competitors -- your value proposition, the core of your brand, the cri...
|
Just waitll we get our brand on you
|
| |
Hanes, the venerable underwear retailer, has decided to revive their classic brand positioning from the 1990s and put it back to work. The question is why did they ever ditch this strategy?
|
Sub prime corporate branding new is not new
|
| |
New Century Financial Corporation [NYSE:NEW] is in search of a brand strategy. The company is one of the largest non- or sub-prime mortgage lenders in the United States, and today announced their first corporate bra...
|
Strategic Tips To Help Clients & Customers Remember Your Brand
|
| |
Top of Mind Awareness or TOMA is a very strategic advantage for businesses and individuals. One strategic method of achieving TOMA is through branding of yourself and your business. We all recognize some brands mo...
|
Wal Marts brand positioning
|
| |
As reported by ABC News, U.S. based retailer Wal-Mart experienced weaker than expected holiday shopping on Black Friday, prompting Wal-Mart to cut its projected sales increase for November by more than half.
|
|
|
Linda Mattacks
(Visit Linda's Website)
"Linda Mattacks is one of those rare
professionals who combine deep
strategy-awareness with a thoroughly
practical approach to business marketing.
What's more, she is as much a hard-nosed
and sales-driven results seeker as she is
an intuitive people person who understands
what makes everyone tick. She has built a
wealth of experience in sales training,
business research, marketing campaign
planning and project management. Linda has
helped organisations of all types and
sizes in the UK and Europe to learn more
about their customers and markets, and
turn that knowledge into revenue. Her
mature and human manner has won her both
business partners' and colleagues'
complete trust, which has opened many new
opportunities for all involved.” - Jaakko
Alanko - MD McCann-Erickson, Business
Division, London, England ... Linda
Mattacks M IDM (the Institute of Direct
Marketing) is a trainer and mentor. She
has developed Selling For Business, a
course that combines the sales, research
and contact marketing skills that enable
individual entrepreneurs and small
businesses to compete successfully with
large organisations. Please visit www.sel
lingforbusiness.com for more details
|
|
 |
|
|
Linda Mattacks's
Complete
List Of
Sales
Articles
|
|
|
If you enjoyed this article, get Linda Mattacks's Complete List of Sales Articles For FREE!
|
| |
|
|
|