{"id":1368,"date":"2008-05-05T23:00:20","date_gmt":"2008-05-06T04:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/startupwhisperer.com\/brand-positioni\/"},"modified":"2021-02-03T16:40:02","modified_gmt":"2021-02-03T22:40:02","slug":"brand-positioni","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/startupwhisperer.com\/2008\/05\/brand-positioni\/","title":{"rendered":"Brand Positioning Clift Notes"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are many great books on positioning.  Starting out in my career, I read a ton of Al Ries and David Aaker<\/a>.  Aaker is really a guru on brand and has delivered many great books on branding over the years.  He’s a Professor Emeritus at the Haas Business School.<\/p>\n

A couple of books that I recommend are Aaker’s "Building Strong Brands<\/a>" and Al Ries’, "The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding<\/a>".  Each deliver very clear and concise perspectives on how to get your company and brand positioned in the minds of consumers. Really that is what its all about.  Its about developing a "Unique Sales Proposition" or USP as us marketing hipsters like to refer to it.  <\/p>\n

There is a lot of work that goes into building clear and concise brands.  When developed successfully brands deliver much better return for investors and your company.  Imagine many different elements being integrated a concise positioning statement that clearly puts you the right market segment with a specific value that is different than your competition.  <\/p>\n

Before you look at this attachment (Download sample_positioning_framework.pdf)<\/a>
\n, you have to do the pre-requisite work around identify the market opportunity, target market within the market, and customers wants-and-needs  assessments.  There isn’t fluffy stuff.  You need to make sure that you’ve identified the right market and segment that is addressable by your product as well as being big enough to become a big business.  In other words, you could slice down a target market so small that considerable market share becomes too small to be interesting or its too limited in scope and it wont be defensible as more competition enters your space.  <\/p>\n

That said, you want all of this work to culminate into a couple of different work products – the most important is the positioning statement and the marketing statement (the words you use for the elevator pitch).  They mean the same thing but the semantics are different because no investor would get excited about a "Market leader in long tail-based publishers using sophisticated yield management algorithms.  Huh? The doors will close in the elevator without any interest in your idea.  <\/p>\n

Here are some quick steps to think about and a worksheet to help you deliver on some key points for your product or company.<\/p>\n