Embark Agency team member looking at example brand positioning mood boards

Brand positioning is the active process of positioning your brand in your customers’ minds. Note the word ‘active’.

Make no mistake, if you don’t actively position your brand, your customers will do it for you, and you’ll run the risk of being sidelined by your competitors.

Your brand, once it hits the marketplace, will take on an almost lifelike persona to your customers. They will think and feel a certain way about it. These thoughts and emotions will influence how they act.

If you haven’t positioned yourself to appeal to your ideal customers’ thoughts and feelings, who exactly is your brand aiming at? Take the proverbial positioning bull by the horns and maximise your marketing potential with a targeted and directed approach. It’s one of the biggest blind spots we see in otherwise strong businesses.

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Brand positioning from your customers’ perspective

“Why are you the best option? What can you offer me that no one else can? How do I know you mean what you say?”

When we make purchasing decisions, we don’t consciously have these thoughts, but the essence of them is what drives us to choose one brand over another. There are literally endless options available to us in today’s market. That’s why it’s so important to clearly illustrate how you will solve the problem your customer is having. If you don’t, they’ll just find someone who does.

However, it’s not just about making your brand stand out. You also have to demonstrate to them that you back up your claims and provide evidence that you follow through on your word. Proving yourself is just as important to your brand positioning as catching their attention in the first place. The brands that do this well own a clear, specific space in the customer’s mind, and that’s a huge part of why people choose them. It’s also where your unique selling proposition does its heavy lifting.

Five questions to help you position your brand effectively

What we buy is driven by our thoughts, values and emotions. Most of the time we already know which brand we are going to buy. We’ve already established an emotional connection to that brand driven by how they have positioned themselves in order to appeal to us.

So how do you actively position your brand towards your target market?

A great place to start is to answer these five questions:

  1. From an emotional and a rational perspective, what does your brand offer your customers?
  2. What pain point does your brand help your customers to address?
  3. What results and outcomes can your customers expect?
  4. Who are your products or services for?
  5. Why are you the brand to choose?

Answer these openly and a position starts to emerge. The trick is to be specific. “We offer great service at a fair price” is not a position, because every competitor says the same thing. The sharper and more distinctive your answers, the easier it becomes for the right customers to see exactly why you’re for them.

Brand positioning and product positioning are two distinct things

Go into the supermarket cereal aisle and there are rows upon rows of cereal boxes. On the front of each box you’ll see numerous statements such as high fibre, low fat, no added sugar, organic… the list is endless. While this is partly brand positioning, as it’s targeting particular niches in the market, it’s mostly product positioning. These statements are focused on the attributes of the product that are going to appeal to a consumer’s preferences and desires. Brand positioning, on the other hand, will tap into a deeper emotional connection.

Here’s the distinction at a glance:

Aspect Brand positioning Product positioning
Focuses on The whole brand and what it stands for. An individual product’s attributes and features.
Appeals to Emotions, values and beliefs. Rational preferences and practical needs.
Example A fashion label known for ethical, sustainable values. “High fibre, low fat, no added sugar” on a cereal box.
The connection Deep and emotional, building long-term loyalty. Immediate and feature-driven, and easily compared.

Let’s look at fashion as an example. In recent years, we’ve heard a lot about the social and environmental impact of fast fashion. Clothes are often made by exploited garment workers who are expected to work under appalling conditions. There are also growing concerns about the sustainability of the fashion industry with its depletion of non-renewable resources and generation of excessive waste.

If these issues are important to someone, they may boycott brands who don’t address their concerns. As a fashion brand, if you went against the grain of the industry and didn’t produce ‘fast’ fashion, you would benefit from positioning yourself in this way. Essentially, you’re connecting with your customer’s values and belief systems to build a strong emotional connection. It’s exactly the kind of bold move that pays off, as we’ve seen with Aussie brands that broke the rules and won.

Get into your customer’s shoes

Tune into the head and heart of your customers. What do they care about? What motivates them? What problems are they looking for solutions to solve? For themselves yes, but also for the other things they care about beyond their immediate needs. You want to pre-empt their rationale by directly addressing what they think, want and feel.

But, don’t forget, you also have to show them that you mean what you say. What are you doing to address those things that they care about? Positioning is a promise, and a promise you don’t keep does more harm than no promise at all. So make sure your messaging and your actions line up. Harness these elements to position your brand and watch the impact that it has on your marketing efforts.

Strong positioning is the foundation everything else in your brand is built on. If you’d like a hand finding and owning your space in the market, a free brand audit is a good place to start, or explore our brand strategy work.

Leave your mark.

FAQs

What is brand positioning?

Brand positioning is the active process of shaping how your brand sits in your customers’ minds, the specific space you own and the thoughts and feelings people associate with you. The key word is “active”. If you don’t deliberately position your brand, your customers and competitors will do it for you, and you might not like where you end up. Done well, positioning makes it instantly clear why you’re the right choice for the right people.

Why is brand positioning so important?

Because in a market with endless options, the brands that win are the ones that own a clear, distinctive place in the customer’s mind. Strong positioning helps the right people understand quickly why you’re for them, builds an emotional connection that drives loyalty, and stops you blending in with competitors who all sound the same. Without it, you’re leaving the most important judgement about your brand entirely up to chance.

What’s the difference between brand positioning and product positioning?

Product positioning focuses on the attributes and features of a specific product, the “high fibre, low fat, no added sugar” claims on a cereal box, and appeals to rational preferences. Brand positioning operates at a higher level: it’s about what your whole brand stands for and the emotional connection it builds through shared values and beliefs. You need both, but it’s brand positioning that creates the deeper loyalty and is much harder for competitors to copy.

How do I position my brand?

Start by answering five questions openly: what you offer emotionally and rationally, what pain point you solve, what outcomes customers can expect, who you’re for, and why you’re the one to choose. Then get specific, because vague answers like “great service at a fair price” aren’t a position. Finally, make sure you can back up your claims, because positioning is a promise. When your messaging and your actions line up, your position becomes believable and powerful.

What’s the difference between brand positioning and a USP?

They’re closely related but not the same. Your USP (unique selling proposition) is the specific thing that sets you apart, the concrete reason to choose you over an alternative. Your brand positioning is the broader space you occupy in the customer’s mind, including the emotions, values and associations attached to you. Think of your USP as a key ingredient in your positioning rather than the whole dish.

Can I reposition my brand later?

Yes. Brands reposition all the time as their market, customers or offer evolve. The important thing is to do it deliberately rather than letting your position drift. Repositioning works best when it’s grounded in a real shift in what you do or who you serve, and when it’s rolled out consistently across your messaging, design and customer experience so the new position actually sticks.