Positioning for Growth

In particular in the High Tech industry, the proper positioning of the products and the services is essential in generating market demand.

In this blogpost, I will recommend several items that help you to properly position your products.

Live the message

Positioning should not be misunderstood as a one time effort. In contrary, to find and maintain a proper positioning, you constantly need to analyse the status and you need to adapt your message to eventual changes.

It is furthermore important that you eat your own dogfood, and that you make sure that this positioning is filled with life throughout your organization. This for example means that you make sure that everybody in your organizationn is ready to repeat your message to customers over and over again.

If you miss in these areas, you will probably loose the authenticy – and this will your (potential) customers notice.

Don’t think too small

You should make sure that your positioning is complete, and that it adresses all relevant stakeholders. It is furthermore important that your positioning is not too narrowly defined.

Many companies intensively ask their customers for importances, but neglect other stakeholders, like for example employees. Such biased focus can easily lead to a positioning, which is too narrowly focussing on selected items. The danger with such bias is, that the positioning remains unpersonal, for instance, because not everybody in your organization supports, and thus, lives it.

Instead of asking, „what“ your product can do, you should predominantly focus on the question, „why“ it and your brand exists.

Keep it simple and useful

The process to elaborate a positioning might take a lot of time, and both, the process and the result might be complex. However, it is important that the positioning itself is easy and recognizable.

Imagine the „elevator pitch“, and thus the request of a CEO to explain him the benefit of your offerings in 30 seconds. You should optimize your positioning in a way that you can explain it in such a short period of time, while you are still able to transport the entire message.

The easiest method to do so, I think, is that you elaborate the positioning, and then ask yourself, what you could remove, without changing the meaning. If each further removal of arguments leads to a situation that your positioning changes, you have probably found the final version.

Stick to the truth

It is quite normal that you choose a positioning, which puts emphasis on the bigger picture, or, which sheds a positive light on your products. However, on the other hand you must make sure that your positioning, and thus, your brand is never discredited, as such a development might lead to larger problems.

To achieve this goal, it is therefore important that you do not overestimate the customer benefit, which your brand might generate. The easiest method to do so, is by concentrating on the truth.

If you are, for example, not a world market leader in xyz, it might not be too wise that you position your products as if they were.

Make it real

Your final positioning will certainly be the result of intense discussions, and analysis. And it will be written down as a large concept paper. However, to make it real, you need people to understand and live it.

To enable this identification, it is helpful that you extract the main idea of your concept, or that you even package your positioning as an idea.

Further Information

In the following articles can you find additional information about the topic „positioning“:

• → Why some technical decisions are too important to leave to engineers

• → Winning in a Down Economy or Building Businesses in Turbulent Times

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This entry was posted on Montag, Juli 26th, 2010 at 7:22 pm. It is filed under PM-Themen, Thema des Tages and tagged with Anforderungen, Market Relation, Messaging, Positioning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.