Brand Positioning for Better Business
Brand positioning is the conceptual place you want to own in your niche consumers’ minds; it refers to the benefits you want them to think of when they think of your brand. An effective brand positioning strategy will maximise customer relevancy and your competitive distinctiveness.
In the final article of our value-based series, Unscene unpacks a brand positioning matrix ideal for business owners, marketing companies in Cape Town and entrepreneurs who want to innovate their products and services and maximise their brand value.
Brand Positioning Matrix Definition
The matrix we have designed defines the essential elements of a brand's positioning platform and guides the relative importance of each element, based on the specific marketing environment, and competitive challenge a brand is faced with.
If innovation were a simple task it wouldn't be considered innovative. While this tool is not meant to be seen as a silver bullet, it may help you navigate your brand's position and, therefore, inspire product developments that are based on a value-added proposition.
A value-added approach ensures market advantage by enhancing your core product in its key emotional, functional or expressive consumer takeaways, in a manner that is differentiated from your competitors. Adding extra product capabilities or uses, refining an appealing and easy-to-use design or improving affordability all depends on your primary brand positioning.
The dimensions in the following matrix do not stipulate themselves as the only benefit(s) that your brand can carry but rather as the priorities you could use when positioning your business and developing your products.
In other words, although a prestigious brand like Loius Vuitton still has a dimension of convenience when visiting their stores, the greatest priority is the element of opulence and luxury. Convenience is proof of such prestigious products, not the other way around.
Prestige VS Convenience
Prestige Goods
Whether or not the product comes at a high cost to the consumer, prestige holds the perception of luxury and is thus associated with wealth, legacy and/ or affluence.
These products are bought for several reasons: for the product's quality and craftsmanship or to support self-worth and status. Think of the brand Louis Vuitton.
Convenience Goods
A convenience good is a consumer item that is widely available and purchased frequently with minimal effort. Because a convenience good can be found readily, it does not typically involve an intensive decision-making process and its primary benefits are found in eliminating friction in some way or form that simplifies its utility.
Microwave meals, Uber or Dollar Shave Club are all shining representations.
Economy VS Premium
Economy Pricing
When referring to economy pricing, we define it as a volume-based pricing strategy wherein you price goods low and gain revenue based on the number of customers who purchase your product.
Premium Pricing
Premium pricing is the practice of keeping the price of products or services artificially high to encourage favourable perceptions among buyers (based solely on the price).
Defining Innovations Platforms
When customers evaluate a product or service, they weigh their perceived value against the asking price. Marketing agencies in Cape Town have generally focused much of their time and energy on managing the price side of that equation (since raising prices can immediately boost profits). But that’s the easy part...
Pricing usually consists of managing a relatively small set of numbers, and pricing analytics and tactics are highly evolved.
The amount and nature of value in a particular product or service always lies in the eye of the beholder. However, universal building blocks of value do exist, creating opportunities for companies to improve their performance in current markets or break into new ones. A rigorous model of consumer value allows a company to come up with new combinations of value that its products and services could deliver. The right combinations, our analysis shows, pay off in stronger customer loyalty, greater consumer willingness to try a particular brand, and sustained revenue growth.
Economic Value
Digital marketing companies in Cape Town can encourage the use of economic value to the customer in their value-based pricing and branding strategies, which will help companies and brands working alongside marketing companies in Cape Town to set prices for their products or services.
Innovation platforms include:
Cost Reduction
A few ways to help your company reduce costs and increase profits is by implementing a value-based pricing strategy that offers customers the ability to save money in purchases, fees or subscriptions.
Go freemium: An Internet-based business model which offers basic services that are accessible free of charge, while more advanced features must be paid for.
Give users multiple tiers: This will give your customers benefits that will save them money, as well as bring in a lot of revenue for your business
Quality
Quality refers to the social performance of a product or a service and can be determined by comparing a set of inherent characteristics with a set of requirements.
Variety
A business looking to elevate their value-based pricing and branding strategy can consult a marketing company in Cape Town to audit its brand positioning. Together they should work on enhancing consumers’ value through a variety of products and services on offer, and more importantly, managing that variety throughout the entire product’s life cycle.
Attractiveness
To enhance customer value, products and services must be appealing beyond their functional benefits. Review how appealing in taste, sight, smell, hearing and other senses your products and services truly are.
Wealth Generation
Wealth is created by businesses that provide unique value to its environment by adding more value to its outputs than the cost of all resources used to produce those outputs.
Integrations
Consumers around the world are looking for innovative, personalised solutions that can help them change habits and lead healthier lives. This global shift has created significant opportunities for businesses and marketing companies in Cape Town to innovate products and services by focusing on lifestyle integration.
Education
A brand that does an exceptional job of educating its audience, creating conscious awareness in them - making them more informed and solving their problems - leads to a stronger relationship with them. These brands have a strong ability to drive purchase (an example is Hootsuite).
Personalised Value
Personalised value is a means of meeting the customer's needs more effectively and efficiently, making interactions faster and easier according to their lifestyles and, consequently, increasing customer satisfaction and the likelihood of repeat visits.
Innovation platforms include:
Rewards
The fundamental shift in people’s day to day needs, combined with financial anxiety, is a challenge the retail industry faces. Connecting with consumers is a strong way to solve this issue, and can be done with carefully designed, personalised shopping loyalty programs that provide real support and well being for workers and families.
Self-Attraction
This refers to when customers purchase attractive items that cause them to feel better about themselves.
Emotional Assurance
These are products and services that sell peace of mind, such as medical aid - assuring you that in the event of an accident or incident, you and your family will be taken care of.
Sense of Wellbeing
When businesses work alongside marketing companies in Cape Town on designing a value-based branding strategy, consumer value can be achieved by innovating products that provide therapeutic value or well-being.
Trending Design
Providing an appealing form or design to your product or service is just as important as a value-based price.
Nostalgia
In an age that's plagued by impersonal digital connections, marketing agencies in Cape Town can focus on references to the past to help humanise brands. By including phrases like ‘remember when…’ allows brands to leverage the positive feelings that come with a walk down memory lane, creating that sense of alignment that we all feel when we think about our past.
Achievement Status
An aspirational brand usually sells a product that a large segment of its exposure audience wishes to own but for economic reasons cannot.
Functional Benefits
Functional benefits are based on a product attribute that provides the customer with functional utility and answers the question, ‘What does your product do?’ Functional benefits ultimately leverage a product’s attributes and features to demonstrate its outcomes and performance. The goal is to select functional benefits that have the greatest impact on customers and support a strong position relative to competitors.
Standardisation
Standardisation conforms to the customer's internalised sense of specifications and is utilised when companies want to achieve a consistent level of quality, production standards, manufacturing output, and brand recognition.
Better Performance
You can innovate products by making changes that improve product engagement or retention. You can achieve this by building a new feature or improving existing features.
Reduced Friction
Friction refers to anything that prevents or dissuades customers from buying your brand’s products or services. For customers, reduced friction can be as simple as the ease of operating an automated vacuum cleaner that does all the work for them.
Simplification
Simplification refers to how a product simplifies a customer’s life. It presents itself in forms such as cost-reduction, the option of having it delivered and where and how it can be stored.
Risk Reduction
An excellent example of a convenience product is a Volvo car. Volvo’s brand is not only sophisticated and well crafted but they glorify the safety features present in their vehicles. They also offer other services such as return policies and warranties, which allow customers to try out their product and measure its value.
Organisation
Whether it’s a digital diary or a calorie counter, this refers to a product that helps the consumer become more organised.
Connection
This refers to a service or product that connects people, such as Facebook, gyms, yoga studios and restaurants.
Self-Transcendent Benefits
Self-transcendence is a state of being that involves the expansion of personal boundaries. This includes experiencing ideas such as considering oneself an integral part of the universe; a deep-rooted interconnectedness to everyone and everything.
Motivation
These are products and services which push people to achieve their goals. A good example is the Nike brand. They also have a digital app called ‘Nike Training’ that tracks your workouts, is filled with motivational quotes and group workouts, and offers personalised fitness plans.
Hope
A good example of a brand that provides its consumers with something to be optimistic about is Dove. A brand that wants you to feel amazing about your skin, assuring you, that with their products, your skin will glow.
Actualisation
These are products and services which provide a sense of personal accomplishment or improvement to a customer. Duolingo is a great example; a comprehensive app that features a wide variety of languages you can pick from to learn.
Belonging
Patagonia is a designer of outdoor clothing and gear for fly fishing, trail running, climbing, surfing, skiing and snowboarding. The impeccable quality of their materials and the fact that everything is done in an environmentally conscious way are all factors that affect their prices. This is a good example of how a product helps people become part of a group or identify with people they admire.
Society
Woodstone is a brand that designs and builds high-quality wooden watches and accessories. They plant 10 trees for every purchase made by their customers, which not only helps other people but society as a whole.
We have tackled the importance of value-based branding and pricing strategies within the retail, banking, and third-party services sectors, hoping to spark ideas around product innovation. Unscene hopes this toolkit proves invaluable to entrepreneurs, business owners, and digital marketing and branding agencies in Cape Town because brands ultimately build better businesses.