With the abundance of brands, businesses as well as products and services available on the modern market, audiences have a hard time choosing which ones are worth their time and resources. Likewise, brands have a much more challenging time figuring out the best ways to approach their target audience and retain their interest in the long run. According to Small Biz Genius, 70% of brand managers consider building an audience more important than converting one-time sales, with consistent branding leading to up to 23% higher revenue margins.
Whether you work as part of a small startup looking for a way to establish its presence on the market or work in a large company with years of experience under its belt, brand positioning presents an equal challenge to all prospective businesses in 2021. With that in mind, let’s take a closer look at how you can position your brand in 2021 and achieve market success going forward.
The Benefits of Successful Brand Positioning
Before we dive into brand positioning guidelines, it’s worth noting why such an initiative can be beneficial for your brand in the first place. As the phrase might suggest, brand positioning is all about customer’s journey mapping and making your business more competitive on the open market and challenging industry leaders with your innovative products and services.
Brand positioning can be done through a multitude of channels depending on your target audience, including social media, email, blogging or even physical events and promotions via local advertisement. Pushing for positive brand positioning and allowing prospective customers and clients to inform themselves about your business portfolio and the ways in which they can convert and become your followers and customers is thus extremely important. When it comes to concrete outcomes, brand positioning can lead to a number of advantageous effects for your business:
- Put your brand visuals to good use
- Achieve a pro-consumer brand identity
- Attract new audiences globally and locally
- Generate higher ROI compared to previous marketing efforts
Brand Positioning Guidelines for 2021
- Lead with Concrete Goals
When it comes to outlining your year-long brand positioning strategy, you should always start with goals and KPIs. Approaching content marketing without a clear outcome in mind can severely hinder your brand positioning efforts and lead to a disjointed marketing campaign.
As such, using a goal-setting framework in conjunction with writing platforms such as Evernote and Be Graded will allow you to create a clear plan of action for your content production. In doing so, you will have a much better idea as to what direction your brand should take in the year to come, and what the main focus and messaging of your content will be as a result.
2. Explore your Competition
Even though you may have a goal in mind for your brand positioning effort, the activities your competition partakes in should be taken into consideration. Samantha Ryker, Chief SEO Specialist at Studicus spoke on the matter recently: “Whether you work in an oversaturated industry or a small and disruptive niche, creating a unique and appealing brand image through your marketing is important for the sake of standing out in your audience’s eyes.”
Industry leaders and businesses with aggressive marketing strategies will attempt to take over your audience with carefully positioned content marketing, paid ads and conversion incentives. That being said, you should differentiate your approach and messaging enough so that your brand doesn’t get bogged down by fierce competition.
3. Reevaluate your Visuals
The visuals you utilize in your brand positioning efforts will make or break your content marketing strategy in more ways than you imagine. According to Tech Jury, using adequate color in your marketing raises brand recognition by up to 80%, with 77% of consumers making their purchase decisions based on brand visuals alone.
Given the importance of visuals in brand positioning, reevaluating your visual identity and investing into branding might be a great idea in order to kickstart your content marketing efforts in 2021. Coupled with platforms such as WowGrade and Readable, you can create a unique identity for your brand giving it market appeal it deserves.
4. Develop a Brand Persona
In order for your brand to be memorable regardless of its positioning, you can create a mascot for its marketing efforts. Mascots offer a very appealing and identifiable way of linking concrete products and services with your brand on the open market.
These brand personas can be integrated into a plethora of content types and omnichannel marketing efforts, including your website, social media pages, email content and print design just to name a few. Whether it’s an animal, an inanimate object made living or a characteristic person drawn in a cartoonish style, brand mascots remain essential as brand positioning tools in 2020.
5. Create a Content Schedule
Once you establish your goals and marketing tools, a content marketing schedule should be established to better organize your brand positioning activities. Michael Avery, Head of Content Marketing at GrabMyEssay had this to say on the topic: “Ad hoc marketing campaigns with no structure or flow of information quickly fall apart due to incoherent messaging and no clear call to action for the end-user. Establishing a step-by-step marketing campaign with clear goals and outcomes is always a more welcome approach with an easier-to-manage production pipeline.”
For example, you can schedule new blog posts to be published on Tuesdays, new social media posts to appear on Wednesdays and Saturdays, in addition to email marketing to go out on Sundays. A structured approach to content marketing will allow not only more creative freedom for your writers and designers but also condition your target audience to expect new content drops in specific intervals going forward.
6. Utilize Dedicated Content Tools
Selecting your content writing tools carefully will allow for higher quality marketing materials to appear on the market with your brand’s name on them. As is the case with any form of brand marketing, the content you produce should never be created without proper tools and services to do so:
Hemingway Editor – The platform is designed with readability and cohesive writing in mind, allowing you to edit and paraphrase your content to be better understood by native and non-native speakers across the globe.
Grammarly – Proofreading and spellchecking play a major role in brand positioning given that each content piece will carry a lot of weight in terms of presenting your business to would-be stakeholders – making this tool essential. You might have made grammatical or spelling errors. Your formatting might not be on point. Keep revising until you have reached a satisfactory version.It would help if you also ran your essay on Grammarly to ensure no potential mistakes were left. Check out Grammarly Review for plagiarism.
7. Engage with your Audience
Lastly, one of the best ways to build an audience and position your brand as pro-consumer is to engage with your followers across the web. Simply publishing content and failing to talk to your target audience will quickly paint a one-sided, profit-driven image of your brand – an image which will be difficult to change after the fact.
Participate in social media post discussions, answer emails and private messages to your business’ accounts and make sure to communicate with your clients and customers at all times. Being proactive and discussing your industry, portfolio and popular trends will indivertibly cause your brand positioning to become more positive and appealing.
In Summary
In the age of non-stop competition and freeform content marketing, establishing a firm and inviting presence on the global market can be quite the challenge. Whether you’re working with a new brand or want to spark interest in an existing business identity, brand positioning is undoubtedly a worthwhile investment to consider. Emphasize your brand’s strengths, mission statements and values in content marketing and the right audience will slowly flock around your portfolio, helping you position your brand in 2021 more easily as a result.
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