Small Business Marketing Series - Vol 2
This blog post is the second of our Small Business Marketing Series. The series’ aim is to provide small businesses in New Zealand with hands-on practical advice to increase their marketing performance. If your small business requires marketing solutions, get in touch with the team here.
BRAND POSITIONING
AND UNIQUE
SELLING PROPOSITION
What is a brand? It’s an intangible idea and is not to be confused with a logo or slogan.
Essentially, it’s the indicator that helps your customer identify and more importantly differentiate your business from your competitors and the noise of the market. Investopedia states that a brand is:
“a business and marketing concept that helps people identify a particular company, product, or individual.”
What is brand positioning?
Brand positioning is defined by Philip Kotler as:
“the act of designing the company’s offering and image to occupy a distinctive place in the mind of the target market.”
Although the definition may be nearly 20 years old, it still rings true today – and maybe even more important with the rise of digital marketing. Overall, a brand is how people identify your business/product, and the positioning of your brand will determine the audience that resonates with its messaging (this is illustrated further through a case study, so don’t worry if it confuses you now).
What is the importance of brand positioning?
By segmenting your business or product (brand) to target your ideal market and customer persona - the greater your competitive advantage and unique sales proposition will become – leading to not only better brand recognition amongst your target audience, but also more sales.
As discussed in the previous blog, your unique selling position clearly differentiates you from your competitors – adding value as well as providing clarity to your target audience. How else would certain fast-food multinationals differentiate themselves from each other? The clearer your message and customer benefits, the more likely your customer will think of your business – Eat Fresh, anyone? It goes without saying, competitor research and analysis is an important component when developing your brand positioning – so check out our previous blog if you haven’t done so yet – it covers everything you need to know and provides you with the template and tools to do so.
Brand positioning
Case Study: Subway
We recently had two high school students pop in to gain some work experience in the studio. They developed a hypothetical marketing video promoting Subway’s sandwich and we discussed their specific branding strategy. We thought that it’d be a perfect time to share that with you here.
Subway is a fast-food multinational competing with other large players such as McDonald’s, Burger King, Burger Fuel, Domino’s Pizza, KFC, Carl’s Jnr. And many more! However, amongst this noisy industry, they can be clearly identified and differentiated from their competitors through small, specific decisions.
How many other fast-food chains have positioned themselves as fresh and healthy?
The green and white wrapping paper, the large cookies, yellow and green text screaming vibrant, natural, and healthy! Their branding is harmoniously developed – including their slogan: Eat Fresh. Not only that but where else can you buy food by the foot-long?
On top of that, their product range is very specific – it mostly involves sandwiches as the main option, aligning their product offering to fit under their brand. Many of their side dishes have a bread component – such as their toasties. It doesn’t just stop with their products, but also with their marketing initiatives.
Here you can find Subway New Zealand’s Facebook marketing campaigns (and yes, they have a Tik Tok account if you’re interested here).
They’ve harmonised their campaigns right down to the specific colour choices and typography choices. This is not because their marketing department simply wants everything to look nice – the overarching idea is that each image and text choice can be clearly linked back to the overall brand of Subway.
"It's like going into a party when you have a new outfit on. You feel more confident than if you were in an old pair of jeans."
- Chris Carroll, Subway's chief advertising officer
Why do I need brand positioning as a small business in the Manawatū?
You may be wondering how this concept will benefit your business, and we’re glad you asked. Even here in Palmerston North, not many businesses are without competition. By positioning your business and its products/services your brand’s message can better resonate with the people the matter – your customers.
Harmonious messaging and brand styling showcase your brand clearly to a limited market. Therefore, it’s important to relay the right message the first-time round – you may not get a second chance. And to do this, you’ll need a brand positioning strategy.
ACTIVITY: Your brand positioning strategy
For this section, you’ll need a good understanding of your own SWOT analysis, your competitor’s SWOT analysis, and a list of digital channels that you’re currently using.
1) Compile your competitor’s points of weakness
Using the SWOT Analysis from the last blog, copy down all your competitor’s weaknesses onto a sheet of paper.
- How many of your competitors have similar weaknesses?
- Why do you think they are weak here?
2) Compile your competitor’s strengths
Using the SWOT Analysis from the last blog, copy down all your competitor’s strengths onto a separate sheet of paper.
- How many of your competitors have similar strengths?
- Why do you think they are strong here?
On a third piece of paper write ‘findings’ in the header. Put down the insights that you discovered. Some common insights may be:
- My competitors don’t run Google Ads for keywords
- My competitors don’t have active social media posting
- My competitors don’t have strong Google reviews
- My competitors don’t have paid advertisements
A unique selling proposition (USP), also known as unique selling point is, where your brand can deliver above your competitors. These competitive advantages are important as they determine where your brand sits in your customers mind against your competitors.
How do you think Spotify successfully hooks in their listeners? One method is through their algorithmically generated playlists – using complex data and analytics to create unique playlists for certain segments of their listeners – resulting in greater engagement across the platform – a perfect competitive advantage.
Typically, USPs are difficult to replicate – if they were easy, they wouldn’t be very unique! Here’s an example: It may be easy to run paid ads across social media – but it’s difficult to build a large social media audience or have thousands of dollars of ad testing documented and evolved over time to better engage with and target your audience compared with your competitors.
Here are some questions to help you with the development of your very own USPs:
What am I doing, that my competitors aren’t?
What do my customers say about my business that they don’t say about my competitors?
Google reviews
Facebook reviews
Facebook search (you’d be surprised who talks online!)
Google related search queries
What unique processes does my business have, that are difficult or impossible to replicate?
What key features do my products/services have – how can these be translated into benefits?
M&Ms – melt in your mouth, not in your hand
Most importantly, it needs to be compelling
How often do you hear people say, ‘we sell high-quality products’ or ‘we have the best customer service’ or even ‘we’re innovative’? There’s nothing unique about these statements – they don’t illustrate benefits to their customers, only features. So, before you state that you’re innovative to your customers, begin with the benefits that they’ll receive.
Wrapping it up
That’s a wrap on the second blog of the series!
You should have:
A strong understanding of a brand, brand positioning, and its importance for your business
A solid understanding of Subway’s own brand positioning strategy and tactics to differentiate their brand from the rest
Your very own brand positioning strategy
We are a full-service creative marketing agency that delivers marketing solutions across all digital channels. Check out our services here for more information on what we do. If you’d like to be reminded of our next blog when it comes out, sign up for our newsletter below.