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Knowbits 
May 2004
Standing Out Against the Competition: What's Your Position?
And I’m not talking about your political leanings, yoga postures,
or the Kama Sutra.
Everyone I know is looking for that elusive
competitive advantage. It's practically a national pastime – and
to judge from our reader in Nigeria, a worldwide obsession. Most people
think, rightly, that marketing can help them find some advantage…gain
some…create some. But how? Start by
asking what "competitive advantage" really is. It means that
customers buy from you first, more, or more often than from someone else.
You might wonder how market position is different than brand – last
month’s Knowbits topic – since both of them deal with people’s
perceptions. So here are some official DEFINITIONS:
Brand: A brand is a mixture of attributes, tangible
and intangible, symbolised in a trademark, which, if managed properly,
creates value and influence.”
Market Position: A measure
of the position of a company or product on a market. Defined as market
share multiplied by share of mind.”
Great. But what's "share of
mind", then?
Share of Mind: There are many definitions of share of
mind. At its most precise, share of mind measures how often consumers
think about a particular brand as a percentage of all the times they think
about all the brands in its category. More loosely, share of mind can
be defined simply as positive perceptions of the brand obtained by market
research. Whereas market share measures the width of a company's market
position, share of mind can be said to measure its depth.”
(source for all definitions: http://www.brandchannel.com/education_glossary.asp)
Hmmm? Now we’re back to brand and market
position! Uh-huh. All interconnected. That’s what you get when you
ask those marketing types. We’ll give it a go:
Brand is what people think of you; Share of mind is how much they think about you.
The reality is that it’s possible for little-known
brands to establish great market position, because they’ve identified
a market need. It is also well-documented the number of household names
that have lost market position and even died, regardless of, or more likely
because of, brand recognition and what their brand came to represent.
(Can you say Oldsmobile, Netscape, Compaq, or Enron?)
GETTING TO THE TOP
You get to a top market position by working at the basics:
- Look at the environment for your product/service - research the space.
Hopefully you did some of this before you actually created a product.
- Find out how a specific need is being met now, and discover how you
can meet it more satisfactorily.
- Develop your positioning strategy based on what you’ve discovered.
There are undoubtedly limitless combinations, but here are some of the
tried and true:
- Emphasize product attributes
- Feature needs/benefits
- Event driven (seasonal, perhaps)
- Addressed to specific users only
- Take on a competitor
- Set yourself apart from competitors
- Once you’ve completed these baseline steps, now you’re
ready to focus on achieving one or more of the following:
- Market penetration
- Market development
- Product development
- Diversification
Reminder: If you don’t position yourself,
a competitor will likely do it for you.
IN A PERFECT WORLD
Here’s a checklist to become the first name on your audience’s
lips:
Pricing – Be clear where your product falls, and hype it up,
whether the level is Platinum, Gold, Silver or Tin.
Quality – Hopefully you produce
quality products, but do you also offer guarantees and easy returns or
replacements?
Service – The customer is royalty,
right? Do you bend over backwards for each and every one?
Distribution – How easy is
it for customers to get what you deliver? Make it a push of the button!
Or better yet, deliver it to their door.
Packaging – Ah well, you would
expect a marketing person to say this was important, but be honest…looks
are important. That’s it! Simple, oui?
Maybe not, but achievable. RELATED
LINKS
For tips on how to fix a broken, maybe even dead, brand:
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/55/brokenbrand.html
Online Learning Center (McGraw Hill)
Tailoring Strategy to Fit Specific Industry and Company Situations
(Try Question
#10)
If you have a question or topic you would like to see in Knowbits, write to Donna Lehman.
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