Your brand identity is a critical component that will shape the future of your business and determine whether or not your company is successful. Regardless of what industry you are joining, your company will always face a fierce amount of competition.
That’s why you need to ensure that you know how to gain the upper hand. Often, this is a matter of devising an effective long term strategy. Part of this will be about ensuring that you have the perfect positioning and framework for your business brand.
Content Overview
Positioning and Messaging Framework, Defined
Benefits of using a Positioning and Messaging Framework
Key components of a positioning and messaging framework
Creating Your Positioning and Messaging Strategy
Examples of effective taglines from popular brands
Does your website reflect your Positioning and Messaging Framework?
Positioning and Messaging Framework, Defined
Positioning and messaging combine two elements. Positioning refers to the process that you should use to communicate and explain the unique elements or attributes of your brand to your target audience.
Messaging refers to the key points and variables that you use as part of your positioning to communicate effectively with your target audience.
Essentially, positioning is used to define your market differentiation. This is critical when you are facing a competitive landscape. Asking yourself what your positioning is will be one of the most important questions about your business.
Positioning can also be referred to as your unique selling proposition (USP). You can use your positioning to shape and define the messaging that you use in your business. This can shape every communication you have with your target audience from emails to blog posts.
A critical aspect of messaging is ensuring your position is clear and consistent in all your communications. Your audience should immediately understand - and love - what your company has to offer.
Benefits of using a Positioning and Messaging Framework
There are various key benefits of using a positioning and messaging framework. With this, you can ensure that there is a clear focus which separates your business from competitors. It can provide you with a distinct advantage against some of your greatest rivals.
A positioning and messaging framework also makes marketing your business far easier overall. You will always have a place to start from and a template to use when crafting content or formulating a marketing strategy for a product or service. You can use your positioning and messaging framework to shape every aspect of your business brand.
Hypothetically, with the right positioning and messaging framework in place, a target audience could look at a piece of content from your business and know it is from your brand without seeing a company name or logo. This is a power level of brand identification which will provide you with a strong footing on the market.
Key components of a positioning and messaging framework
1. Buyer Persona
Create a buyer persona that depicts your target customer. You can go as detailed as their favorite pastimes, TV shows, daily schedule, and the most common social media platform that they use. The most important element of a buyer persona is the problems that need to be solved immediately.
2. Value Proposition
A value proposition is a feature of the product or service that justifies the cost of investment. It will make your customers buy your product or service because it is more valuable than the amount that they are spending. Some even totally remove the risks by giving a “money-back guarantee”.
3. Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
Your unique selling proposition describes why your product or service stands out from the competition. This is not just about the price, but the value you can create that your competitors can’t.
Creating Your Positioning and Messaging Strategy
With the key components mentioned above, you can now create an effective elevator pitch. If you have less than a minute to explain the value of your business - create it with those key components in mind. Make it short, clear, and memorable - something your potential customer can easily understand.
Examples of effective taglines from popular brands
Your positioning and messaging will help you to create effective and marketable taglines for your products. Some examples of previous successful taglines include:
- Disneyworld: “The Happiest Place On Earth”
- Mastercard: “There are some things money can’t buy. For everything else, there’s Mastercard”
- Maybelline: “Maybe she’s born with it. Maybe it’s Maybelline.”
Each of these immediately and clearly conveys what makes a brand unique and why customers should care. For instance, Disney’s tag highlights its positioning as the best holiday destination for families. The full tagline is no child is ever considered lost in Disney, because how can you ever be lost in the happiest place on earth?
Does your website reflect your Positioning and Messaging Framework?
Your website is often the first impression that your target audience will receive of your business. As such, it should reflect your positioning and framework perfectly. Your home page should clearly demonstrate why your business is different from others in your industry and why your audience should care. You need to pitch your brand to users who are encountering it for the first time.
Are the pages and posts on your site clear about the points that you want to convey to an audience? If not, then you need to restructure and redesign your website so it does encapsulate your positioning and messaging framework.
There are a few key signs that your website is not reflective of your positioning and messaging. A high bounce rate can suggest that users are confused about what you are offering and why they should care. Confusion can lead to them quickly clicking away without engaging.
Alternatively, you can use our website effective assessment (WEA). With it, we can show you whether or not your visitors are engaging and responding to your messaging. The WEA tests your site against 5 criteria and provides a report which explains where the issues are as well as what you need to do to fix them. It can be a great tool to ensure that your website matches your brand and fits your target audience.
To summarize, positioning and messaging will always be key components of any strategy for your business. With the right positioning, you can separate your company from competitors and ensure that your business does stand out. Through messaging, you can guarantee that your position is clear and immediately captivates the interest of your target audience. You can use your positioning and messaging framework as a template to shape every piece of content that you create for your marketing strategy.
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