Why Brand Positioning Research Matters for Effective Marketing Strategy 

Brand positioning defines where your business stands in the market, shaping how customers perceive your value and uniqueness. 

Without a clear position, even the best products can go unnoticed. Let’s explore how brand positioning affects your business and why brand positioning research is important for an effective marketing strategy.

What Is Brand Positioning?

Put simply, brand positioning identifies where your business fits in the market. It’s about what you offer, how you stand out from your competitors, and how your target audience engages with your brand, products, and services.

Effective brand positioning aligns a company’s offerings with customer needs and preferences while emphasizing the brand’s key attributes, values, and benefits. In essence, brand positioning is about defining where your brand stands in the market, what it represents, and how it should be perceived by your audience.

Why Is Brand Positioning Important?

Determining your brand position is essential to understanding who you are and what you offer. You can have the greatest products ever, but if you don’t market and position these effectively, nobody will know or care. 

A strong position will guide your marketing strategies, messaging, and campaigns to ensure your branding is consistent across all channels and communicates effectively with target consumers.

A well-defined brand position also strengthens a company’s internal operations by aligning them with its market identity. For instance, implementing IT cost reduction strategies can help streamline business operations, allowing companies to reallocate resources toward enhancing their brand experience and marketing efforts.

Assessing your market position helps distinguish your brand from the competition, making it more recognizable and memorable. Researching the brand positioning of your competitors will give you an idea of what’s already available in the market and indicate which successful brand positioning strategies could work for your business, too.

Crucially, a strong brand position has an equally strong influence on consumer perceptions. Creating a memorable and impressive brand will stick in the minds of potential customers when it comes to purchasing decisions, and your marketing efforts will be more successful in targeting your ideal customers.

The fact is that brand positioning takes place whether you intend to do so or not. If you don’t take the time to research and determine your brand position, customers will automatically categorize you and make assumptions about your business based on your website, products, social media, branding, marketing messages, and so on.

How to Research Brand Positioning

There are several ways to conduct brand positioning research, including quantitative research methods, qualitative research methods, and hybrid approaches. To shape your positioning and business strategy effectively, you’ll likely use a mix of methods – this will ensure you gain as much insight as possible.

Quantitative Methods

Quantitative research involves collecting and analyzing data to identify patterns, trends, and correlations. This data-driven approach has numerous benefits, including:

• Large sample sizes: Quantitative research typically involves a large number of respondents, providing a more representative view of the target market.
• Objective and measurable: Quantitative data is objective and can be statistically analyzed, allowing marketers to make data-driven decisions about brand positioning.
• Comparative analysis: The ability to compare your brand against competitors on key metrics allows for a clearer understanding of your brand’s relative position in the market.

However, there are a few weaknesses that come with quantitative research. These include:

• Limited depth: While quantitative research is excellent for measuring trends, it may lack the depth needed to understand the emotional drivers behind brand perceptions.
• Structured responses: Since surveys and questionnaires rely on predefined questions, they may not capture the full range of consumer thoughts and feelings.

Surveys and Questionnaires

Large-scale surveys are one of the most common tools for quantitative brand research. Surveys can measure brand awareness, consumer satisfaction, and key attributes that consumers associate with a brand. Respondents answer structured questions, which provide measurable data for analysis.

Surveys can be rolled out en masse, making them a quick and affordable way of gaining consumer insights. Data can be collected online, by phone, or by email, allowing business owners to gather information from a large pool of respondents that can then be used to influence brand positioning and marketing strategies.

Competitive Intelligence Research

Analyzing the competition is an essential part of any business strategy. It’s particularly useful when it comes to assessing your current positioning and understanding how your brand can stand out from the crowd.

Competitive intelligence research involves using business information about competitors to identify what the competition does well, what their weaknesses are, and where there are any gaps in the market. This is helpful not only in terms of defining your own positioning but also in determining price points and tracking your competitors’ market share.

Qualitative Methods

Qualitative research offers richer insights into consumer behaviors and helps uncover the underlying reasons behind consumer perceptions and preferences. The goal of qualitative research in brand positioning is to gather nuanced, subjective data that reveals how consumers feel about a brand and its competitors.

The benefits of qualitative methods include:

• Rich insights into emotions and motivations: Qualitative research helps marketers understand the emotional aspects of brand perception, which can guide the development of a brand personality that resonates with the target audience.
• Identification of brand advocates and detractors: Through focus groups or interviews, researchers can identify consumers who are either strong supporters or critics of the brand. This helps in understanding the strengths and weaknesses of current brand positioning.

Qualitative research does have some limitations, such as:

• Small sample size: Qualitative research typically involves fewer participants than quantitative research, making it less representative of the broader target audience.
• Subjectivity: The findings from qualitative research are more subjective, which means they can be harder to generalize across different market segments.

Focus Groups

Focus groups involve small, moderated discussions with target audience members. These discussions provide insights into consumer perceptions, allowing marketers to explore how a brand is perceived compared to competitors. Focus groups can also reveal emotional connections to a brand, helping marketers shape their positioning strategies.

Interviews

One-on-one interviews with consumers, industry experts, or stakeholders provide a deeper understanding of personal opinions and experiences. This method allows for a more detailed exploration of brand perceptions and consumer preferences.

Hybrid Methods

Hybrid research combines both qualitative and quantitative approaches to provide a more comprehensive understanding of brand positioning. Benefits include:

• Comprehensive insights: By combining both qualitative and quantitative methods, hybrid research provides a fuller picture of how a brand is perceived and why.
• Flexibility: Hybrid research can be customized to the specific needs of the brand, allowing for a more targeted approach to positioning research.
• Validation and exploration: The qualitative component explores consumer thoughts and feelings, while the quantitative component validates these insights across a broader population.

There are several factors which can reduce the success of hybrid approaches, including:

• Cost and time: Conducting both qualitative and quantitative research can be more expensive and time-consuming than relying on one method alone.
• Complexity: Hybrid research designs are more complex to execute and analyze, requiring expertise in both methodologies.

Mixed-Method Surveys

These surveys combine open-ended questions (qualitative) with closed-ended, scale-based questions (quantitative). This allows researchers to gather both detailed insights and measurable data in the same study.

Brand Tracking Studies

These are ongoing studies that continuously monitor both qualitative and quantitative data about brand perceptions over time. This helps in understanding how brand positioning evolves in response to marketing efforts and market changes.

How Do You Position Your Brand Effectively?

Whether you’re new to the market or undergoing a business process transformation, figuring out how to position your brand will depend on a number of factors, including your size, target markets, and goals. Let’s take a look at some positioning concepts to see how you can maximize the success of your marketing efforts and drive business growth.

Quality-Based

For certain customers, quality is the number one priority. Presenting your brand from a quality-based position means stressing the value of your products and focusing on luxury and prestige.

Rolex is a prime example of quality-based positioning. The brand is the gold standard of watchmakers, promising high-end products for affluent consumers.

Convenience-Based

A convenience-based positioning strategy, on the other hand, emphasizes ease of use as the key differentiator between your brand and the competition. Other factors, such as excellent customer service and accessibility, play a part in marketing your products as the most convenient solution for busy consumers.

Amazon epitomizes this approach, offering fast and simple online ordering, same-day delivery, and 24/7 customer support.

Price-Based

You guessed it, price-based brand positioning is all about the money. This is for the brands that promise the most affordable, valuable product on the market for the cost-conscious customer.

McDonald’s uses a price-based approach for its brand positioning, heavily marketing its Dollar Menu and highlighting its low-cost meals for all the family.

Problem VS Solution-Based

Many customers go looking for a product to solve an issue they’re having. Whether they’re looking for stain remover or storage solutions, they want a quick, easy, and effective answer to their problem. Positioning your brand as the solution to that problem puts you front of mind whenever these customers need your product.

Kleenex does this very well, so much so that consumers often interchange the word ‘tissue’ for the brand name.

To Wrap This Up

Mastering brand positioning is about more than just your marketing efforts. A strong brand position separates you from competitors and encourages a deeper, more loyal bond with your customers. 

Taking the time to carry out brand positioning research will give you valuable insights into consumer preferences and perceptions, guide you on the effectiveness of your current brand position, and suggest some successful brand positioning strategies.

No matter which approach you take, strategically positioning your brand will lead to better business outcomes all around – do your research, listen to your customers, and watch your marketing strategy thrive.