Positioning Your Brand to the Market

Imagine starting your very own bakery. You’ve finally got the bank’s approval for a loan, you’ve found the perfect location to sell those cakes and pastries and you’re one step closer to achieving your dream of being a celebrity chef like Cake Boss’ Buddy Valastro.

But, as you start off your business, a genuine concern would be how would you sell your products? Will your tiramisu, red velvet cakes and salted-egg croissants be able to capture the hearts of the customers out there?

Remember, there are a bunch of other bakeries out there, which have been established for awhile – like King’s Confectionery, Secret Recipe and Rekindle. Why would others want to purchase your delicious pastries instead of the dozens of bakeries out there?

Why would you want others to purchase your brand?</br/>

This is where Brand Positioning comes into play – providing your target customer’s reason to purchase your brand over the others.

When developing your own brand positioning, you should ask if:

the brand stands out (in a relevant way) from its competitors
the brand is significant and encouraging in the niche market?
it be consistently delivered across all the customers and markets
it is appropriate to current and planned target markets
it helps achieve the organisation’s financial goals

Brand Positioning is the deliberate act of associating your brand with a distinctive place and value in the target customer’s mind. It is one of the most important steps to take when building your brand.

Your brand positioning should ensure that all brand activities have a common aim, which is guided, directed and delivered by the brand’s benefits or reasons to buy; and it focuses on all experiences the consumer has with you.

So, you would need to set yourselves aside from the crowd – stand out from the competitors.

In order to do so, you would need employ strategies that encompass several of these aspects to differentiate your brand (or in this case, bakery) from the competitors:

Product differentiation: What kind of pastries, cakes and baked goods does the bakery choose to provide?
Service differentiation: How can the bakery better serve its breads and cakes to customers?
Personnel differentiation: What can the bakers and servers do differently to showcase their uniqueness?
Image differentiation: How does the bakery choose to present its brand to customers? What symbols and images will it use?
Channel differentiation: How are the cakes and breads sent to customers? Is there a way to make it better, faster or cheaper?

By properly managing these aspects, do expect good sales and bigger share of the market.

However, developing your positioning is not without certain pitfalls. You could end up with:

Under positioning – The customers have a unsure and unclear idea of the brand.
Over positioning – The customers have limited a awareness of the brand.
Confused positioning – The customers have confused opinions of the brand.
Double Positioning – The customers do not accept the claims of the brand.

At the end of the day, if you were to get your brand positioning done right, your brand would be the one standing out in the middle of the crowd – amongst the many other brands out there.