How to Create Effective Brand Positioning Statements

July 11, 2023

How do successful brands create effective brand positioning?

Brand positioning statements succinctly and quickly describe a brand's purpose and aesthetic — and how it effectively fills a particular need of the company's target market. Unlike a mission statement or a vision statement, a brand positioning statement is an internal tool that aligns marketing efforts with the brand and value proposition.

Well-designed brand positioning statements help crystallize what makes your brand uniquely distinctive, ensuring that you create real, lasting connections with your target(s). Listening to your customers can inform how to position your brand through surveys, data analyzation, and social listening through media. This allows you to curate and understand your consumer and the voice your brand needs to emulate.

Wendy's, for example, achieved this by leveraging gaming as a way to position itself with gen Z. Carl Loredo, U.S. CMO at The Wendy's Company, explained that brands need to find unique ways to engage with their target audiences at an ANA event:

"Look at the heart of it, we've looked at a bunch of different ways that we engage with gen Z, but we've just got to make sure that we continue to find clever ways to connect with our fans. It's got to be real. It's got to be authentic. But ultimately, you've got to know who you are, and you've got to spend a ton of time listening to be able to figure out what are the right ways that you can authentically cross over with this audience. Once you're sure of that and you know who you are, and you've delivered on that brand positioning, then you can ultimately begin to think about what are the right ways for us to engage here? Who are the right partners that we can leverage to help us as we begin to move forward in our journey?"

Below are best practices, examples, and tools.

Best Practices

A Complete Guide to Successful Brand Positioning. HubSpot, September 2022.
If you scrape your knee, do you ask for a bandage or a Band-Aid? Successful companies like Coca-Cola and Band-Aid have one important thing in common: a strong brand positioning strategy. In fact, their brand names have become generic terms for all similar products in their niche. A strong brand positioning strategy is an absolute must for all businesses striving for success — and the proof is in the numbers.

Brands that are consistently presented see an average revenue increase of 10 to 20 percent. Successful branding yields benefits such as increased customer loyalty, an improved image, and a relatable identity that sets you apart from the competition. In this post, you'll learn the framework for successfully positioning a brand within your ideal market.
16 Examples of Positioning Statements and How to Craft Your Own. HubSpot, June 2023.
Your positioning impacts all aspects of your branding and how your market sees you. It influences everything your business presents and shares about your product and brand with your target audience. Your internal teams benefit greatly from effective positioning, too — it helps sales reps, marketers, and service and support teams create more delightful and on-brand experiences for customers.

When consumers visit your company website, view an ad, or check out your Twitter page, each piece of content should communicate the business' core values and brand and a positioning statement helps you do exactly that. Here HubSpot offers examples of strong positioning statements and explains how to create one for your brand.

How to Write a Positioning Statement: 7 Essential Steps for Your Brand. Fabrik, April 2023.
With a brand positioning statement, you distill all elements that make your company compelling to your target customer into one simple declaration. You highlight your unique value proposition and place in the industry and define the customer you want to reach. Used correctly, your brand positioning statement will help to guide your marketing efforts, improve the consistency of your brand, and keep your team members on the same page. You'll use it when introducing a new product or creating an asset for your brand identity. This article shares everything you know to create a good positioning statement to align your team and boost your brand presence.
12 Brand Positioning Statement Examples and Why They Work. Brafton, November 2022.
What does your brand positioning statement say about you? Is your brand motivational like Nike, environmentally focused like Patagonia or a trend-setter like Outdoor Voices? Strong brand positioning gives your target audience a solid idea of who your brand is and why they should choose you over your competitors. Brafton compiled some brand positioning statement examples that will do just that.
12 Positioning Statement Examples and How to Write Your Own. Zendesk, March 2022.
Building a great product isn't enough to stand out in the market. What you need is a compelling message—one that speaks to your audience and is unique to your brand. How do you make sure you're telling the same story to every customer across every touchpoint? One key tactic is writing a positioning statement. How do you write a positioning statement? Get inspiration here with 12 of the best positioning statement examples.

Examples

Extended Stay America Adopts a New "Genuine Goodness" Brand Identity. ANA, March 2023.
While Extended Stay America has been the leader in the mid-scale extended-stay hotel segment, it found that it lacked a clear identity and an emotional appeal for customers. These disadvantages were aggravated by the fact that the hotel chain had strayed from its core purpose of providing stays of a week or longer by focusing much of its marketing on promoting stays of shorter duration. The brand's new messaging focused less on price, as it had previously, and instead highlighted its accommodations' comfort, as reflected in homey, fully equipped kitchens, and signature bedding.
Tapping into the Psychology of Clean Label. ANA, July 2022.
Ingredion's brand position is to "be what's next." This thought leadership campaign is an example of the mission to deliver useful marketing that helps accelerate customer success by creating the next wave of consumer preferred foods — the email strategy is an integral part of delivering that message. The Psychology of Clean Label, like all good thought leadership, has proven to engage the market beyond expectations and previous campaigns about clean label.

Getting in the Game with Gen Z. ANA, April 2022.
Wendy's is widely recognized as one of the most engaged brands reaching the diverse and influential gen Z audience, but that doesn't just happen overnight. Carl Loredo, Wendy's U.S. CMO, explained the story of how the QSR known for its square hamburgers leveraged its challenger attitude to reshape the rules and became an iconic gen Z "brand-fluencer" in gaming, social, sports, and pop culture. As the queen of content marketing, Wendy's recipe for success starts with redefining how a brand shows up to big stages like NCAA March Madness and emerging spaces like Discord. Loredo offered insights into crafting a distinctive brand voice, listening to customers, and showing up for fans when others let them down.

Podcasts

Creating Real Human Connection. ANA, January 2022.
Inspiring people to connect in a more meaningful way is core to the marketing and branding efforts at Cox Communications, the largest private telecom company in the U.S. Behind the work of Gaston Vaneri, SVP of brand, Cox is bringing people closer together to build a better future through broadband applications and services. In this episode of Beyond Profit, a podcast of the ANA Center for Brand Purpose, Gaston joins host Ken Beaulieu to discuss Cox's brand positioning and how it's bringing people closer and changing the reputation of the telecom industry.

Tools

Positioning Statement Worksheet. ANA/Demand Metric.
This worksheet will help you define a positioning statement that describes your product, defines its differentiation, and how you can create value for customers.

Training

Brand Building with Positioning and Activation (Half Day). ANA.
To build differentiated brand positioning and to drive effective activation, your brand needs to have a disciplined process around competitive analysis, brand analysis, and decision journey mapping. Without these disciplines, your brand equity may erode, falling victim to misaligned and ineffective marketing, poor marketing ROI, internal obstacles, and misunderstandings.

This workshop will help you to build brand assets that align with your customers' needs and that will help establish a unique and ownable position in the marketplace. It breaks down the key components of brand building in a way that will engage you, build your knowledge, and reveal practical insights and initiatives that you can use to build your brand and bottom line. The workshop concludes with lessons learned on how to effectively put these insights into motion with best practices and examples on how to activate your brand experience.

To register for this course, contact training@ana.net.

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