Project Management | Product Positioning
Product positioning is a vital component of an advertising and marketing process plan. Product positioning is the procedure marketers use to find out the proper way to communicate their products’ attributes for their target customers according to customer needs, competitive pressures, available communication channels and thoroughly crafted key messages. Effective product positioning helps to ensure that marketing messages resonate with target consumers and compel them to do this.
Understanding Customer Needs
Effective product positioning needs a obvious knowledge of customer needs so the right communication channels are selected and key messages will resonate with customers. Product positioning begins with identifying specific, specialized niche segments to focus on – not only women over 25 but women from 25 to 30 who operate in senior-level management positions, make $X each year, are single and revel in sports activities. The greater specific, the greater.
Additionally to identifying the client according to demographic and psychographic (personality/lifestyle) attributes, marketers need to comprehend customer needs, especially in accordance with the services and products they need to offer, to obviously convey value in their marketing strategy.
Weigh Competitive Pressures
Marketers must weigh competitive pressures when they’re thinking about the career aspects of their marketing plans. Effective positioning conveys to consumers why this company’s service or product ought to be preferred over other competitive options according to what the organization is aware of the prospective audience’s needs. Effective marketing plans clearly identify the way the company’s services or products aren’t the same as competitors’ choices and how.
There’s no value in becoming a “me too” product offering and just copying what competition is doing. Marketers must stick out in the crowd with techniques that hold value for his or her target markets.
Targeting Communication Channels
Product positioning helps marketers consider how their choices aren’t the same as others that customers have to select from. But it’s insufficient to understand this from your internal perspective – marketers must communicate this towards the target audiences. To get this done effectively, they have to choose communication channels that can interact with their identified target audiences at occasions when they’ll be most receptive to those messages.
Consider how automobile manufacturers position their goods through communication via television commercials during sporting occasions, for example, or how cosmetics manufacturers run full-page, full-color ads in women’s magazines.
Carefully Crafted Key Messages
The ultimate challenge in effective product positioning is conveying the differentiating, value-added facets of your products or services for your audience with the communication channels you’ve selected. These messages are made to convey the way your method is different (and) than competitive choices, in addition to address the worth-added attributes which are vital that you your audience. Product positioning reaches the building blocks associated with a effective marketing strategy since it impacts the best purchase decision.
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