What is one tip for writing a brand positioning statement?To help businesses write a brand positioning statement, we asked marketing professionals and business owners this question for their best tips. From staying true to your values to emphasizing what the brand does for its customers, there are several tips that may help you write a brand positioning statement that provides a clear identity for your business.
Here is what 12 thought-leaders had to say:
• Staying True to Your Core Values and Mission
• Use High Retention Keywords
• Research the Competition
• Collaborate With Other Teams
• Identify Your Icp & Curate to Them Directly
• Brand Love
• An End and Beginning
• Draft, Refine, & Repeat
• Skip the Flowery Wordplay
• Carve a Niche, Empower Them
• Mention What Sets You Apart from the Competition
• Put an Emphasis on the Customers
Staying True to Your Core Values and Mission
A brand positioning statement must clearly exemplify the core values of your business, without leaving any room for ambiguity. Rather than trying too hard to be quirky and unique, put yourself in the minds of your audience and work your way backward, highlighting everything that your business stands for — from its goals and objectives to its very purpose.
Harry Morton, Lower Street
Use High Retention Keywords
Incorporate the keywords that your highest retention customers use when searching for your product or service. By doing so, you can ensure that your brand positioning statement is visible, consistent, and easily found by those who are most likely to be interested in what you have to offer.
Matthew Ramirez, Paraphrasing Tool
Research the Competition
Make sure you have a clear understanding of what your competitors are doing. It’s important to make sure you can articulate how you stand apart from your competition. You may also get ideas after researching your competitors. In addition, you might notice areas where they have gaps which could give your business a leg up. Doing adequate research and communicating your brand positioning statement clearly are both keys to your success.
Sarah Pirrie, Healist Naturals
Collaborate With Other Teams
Though it’s easy to believe a brand positioning statement is a marketing effort, your company has multiple touchpoints with customers and prospects. When writing a brand positioning statement, make sure to collaborate with other teams. Get input and feedback from product developers, sales leaders, and customer success teams. You don’t want to dilute the message, but you’ll create a more holistic statement if you’ve considered additional perspectives.
Logan Mallory, Motivosity
Identify Your ICP & Curate to Them Directly
Be as specific as possible in identifying who you are trying to serve with your brand. The perfect brand positioning statement concisely embodies your brand image while conveying the mission behind your business.
Every brand has an ICP that matches the target demographic they are looking to market towards. It is key to address this type of consumer as precisely as possible both in your brand positioning statement and in your targeted advertisements. The stronger your profile, the stronger your brand will attract the type of consumer you are hoping to sell towards.
Every business needs to do at least one thing better than its competitors. Even if this strength is just pinpointing the perfect customer for you, that is a huge advantage over the competition.
Zach Goldstein, Public Rec
Brand Love
To formulate an effective, useful brand positioning statement, companies should look at their core values and the needs of the market. Companies with strong customer loyalty often prefer to place emphasis on their history and dedication to quality service. They might use phrases like “we’ve been around for over X years” or “our customers trust us.” Companies looking to break into new markets need to look at what the competition is doing. One way to approach this for a brand is to think about the desired customer and their reaction when seeing the brand. The emotional reaction triggers a specific set of beliefs, which then compels that person to purchase the product or service in question. This emotional reaction is what we refer to as “brand love.
Becky Moore, GlobalGrasshopper
An End and Beginning
While shorter than most pieces of copy, a brand positioning statement is still a story. Ensuring that your brand positioning statement has a definitive end and beginning, and takes the reader on a journey, no matter how short, will not only make you stand out but increase your accessibility.
Ari Sherman, evo hemp
Draft, Refine, & Repeat
Use a simple brand positioning statement template to plot the most important points about your brand. Don’t worry if it sounds robotic or boring – this is just your first draft. Once you have the key points listed, refine your message and insert your brand’s personality into the statement. You want the statement to be specific enough that it’s unique to your brand, but broad enough to help you develop a framework that can help guide your business and branding decisions. Any more than 4 sentences, it’s time to refine further – your brand positioning statement is too long!
James Diel, Textel
Skip the Flowery Wordplay
When you’re creating a brand positioning statement for your business you want it to be impactful. Sometimes, writers can mistake impact for complexity, and a positioning statement should contain your target market, your business offerings, and the impact of your differentiated product or service – no more, no less. Keep the statement around 3 sentences and use simple verbiage and sentence structure. It’s far more impactful than a confusingly complex brand statement.
John Li, Fig Loans
Carve a Niche, Empower Them
Avoid broad strokes. Have a niche-first mentality when you start on a brand positioning statement. If your business is providing health data to consumers, don’t put it plainly. Convey what is special about your business and brand. Furthermore, don’t make them think they have to do any work. They should feel like they’re reaping the benefits from the work you’re doing for them. Present something like, “We crunch the data. You live a healthier life.” That is a better alternative than saying, “We do the research and give you recommendations so that you can improve your health.” Let them know what your services or products do for them to make their lives better and make them feel empowered. You work on their behalf.
Patrick Samy, Span
Mention What Sets You Apart from the Competition
A brand positioning statement’s main motto is to position your brand differently from the competition. So the one thing that your statement should mention vividly is how your brand stands apart from the competition. This helps customers differentiate between your brand and other brands in the industry. It also gives them a reason to choose you above the others. While this mention should be in clear words and with absolute confidence, it should also not appear to be arrogant or boastful.
Azmaira Maker, Ph.D., Aspiring Families
Put an Emphasis on the Customers
One great thing to focus on when writing a brand positioning statement for your audience. Especially as an eCommerce business, we always want to put an emphasis on our consumers, as they are the ones who give us the most insight into our business growth and product success. When writing a brand positioning statement, always include what your brand does for its audience.
You have to be clear about who your business is attempting to help, or else finding an audience will be virtually impossible. Every product is meant to solve a problem, so highlight that problem, and say how you’re going to help.
Gabriel Dungan, ViscoSoft
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