Competitive Positioning Strategy

In what ways does your brand stand out from all the others? What’s the value of choosing your brand over your competitors? Competitive positioning is a marketing strategy the refers to how the brand will do just that. The goal of the competitive positioning strategy is not only to increase sales but can guide your brand with purpose. So, in what ways can your brand make itself stand out?

1.     Excellence /Value

2.     Leadership

3.     Niche

4.     Customer service

The benefits really speak for themselves when winning over your customers through positioning but how do you create a good strategy to do so? Here are some point to help you get started.

1.     Study the competition: see how they perform, what are they lacking that you can offer? Perform SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats)

2.     Market research: can help understand size, scope and demographics.

3.     Define your goal: What are the company short and long-term goals? Decide what your brand goal is and this will help the positioning strategy.

4.     Map it out: we mean this literally actually. Create a perceptual graph with two axis and four quadrants. Each line represents an attribute. Remember those x, y axis graphs you used back in algebra. It’s like that. No number though thankfully. Let’s look at an example. One line is for quality and the other price. The positive axis for quality is high quality. The positive for price is high pricing. The negative portion of the axis for quality is equal to low quality and the negative for price would be for low pricing. You can do this to find holes in your particular market niche.

 Ultimately, you started your brand because you knew there was something lacking in your field so finding your niche shouldn’t be too difficult. Mapping out a plan to get others to believe in your dream is another story. It will take planning and time. Make sure to set deadline and goal dates to stay on track. It’s also very motivating for you and your team to see achievement. Happy planning.

Advertising for Good

We recently read the Adage article on how advertising companies can help with promoting activism. Aka. Advertising for good. It made us think of some of the campaigns we’ve been a part of, one of which was very recent for help during Natural Disasters. Over the span of our time here at Locomotive, we’ve managed to be part of campaigns that really bring out the best in all of us. Our recent work with Home Depot for disaster relief is one we’re very proud of but it’s not just limited to this one campaign. We’ve done campaigns the spotlight human kindness. And one for Comcast called, “Lift Zones,” where they gave free internet in underprivileged schools so kids would have access. Even small acts of neighborliness were touted in a Ritz commercial we helped source user-generated content for.  We’re not trying to toot our own horn here or anything it was just eye opening to read this article and realize that we’ve been part of some really great campaigns that advertise for GOOD. Here at Locomotive we’re proud to say that we are able to contribute to causes that are for the greater good of the world. Now, more than ever, it’s important to the consumers that brands are socioeconomically aware and give back somehow. They won’t support brands that don’t and that’s the bottom line now. Most of all, brands should be doing this not to only appease their audience but to do something better for the world. Leave it better than when we came into it!