Do you need to increase sales for one (or all) of your products?
Are you trying to figure out how to capture your share of the market with a limited budget and resources?
Positioning… it’s one of the best kept secrets out there. Here is how you can use it to promote any product or service.
“Positioning” was first introduced by Jack Trout in 1969. It was then made more broadly known by Al Ries and Jack Trout in their bestselling book “Positioning – The Battle for Your Mind.” (McGraw-Hill 1981)
What is Positioning?
Positioning is comparing one’s product, service or company with something already known in the public’s mind. Example: When the first frozen yogurt stores were launched years ago most Americans had never tasted it. Yogurt was eaten by health food “nuts” who would knowingly ingest aged dairy products with billions of living bacteria inside. Imagine trying to describe at length such a product and sell it as a dessert item, no less?!
The marketing solution? Positioning: relate the new product with something already familiar to the public. “Tastes like ice cream but better for you.” The result? New yogurt stores everywhere had lines of people outside waiting to get in. Lucky break? No, good sound research.
In my 35 plus years in print media marketing I’ve seen hundreds of companies waste untold millions of dollars on bright ideas and glossy campaigns that weren’t researched and never really hit the mark.
Wouldn’t it be great if the benefits of your company’s products and services could be so clearly appreciated by your potential customers? Here’s an excerpt that helps illustrate this concept. It is from an article written by a friend of mine, Bruce Wiseman, founder of On Target Research, one of the only firms I trust for affordable, accurate positioning surveys and market research.
“Mental Real Estate”
Positioning targets mental real estate.
It is the marketing technique that enables you to establish your product or brand in the mind of your public.
To do that, you have to find a niche, a place – an opening in which to bolt down your brand.
When done correctly, sales soar like a new iPhone release.
Positioning enables one to make something that is unfamiliar familiar by tying it to something already in the mind of your public.
The soldiers of A company narrowly escaped meeting the same fate as Custer at the Little Big Horn.
She looks like a young Elizabeth Taylor.
The new Ford Mustang is faster than a Corvette.
He dances like Mikhail Baryshnikov.
Watch Bruce explain more fully…
We know firsthand the value of market research and positioning. 35 years ago I started Clear Print on a shoestring budget. But before buying any equipment, leasing a building or even choosing a company name I invested in market research to find out what the marketing and packaging professionals really needed and wanted from our industry and how to position our company so they’d choose us over the competition. Even the name, ClearPrint, was surveyed–right down to the type fonts.
The best marketers we know have successfully used positioning research to guide their message. They use that same research in the design of all their marketing channels including websites, brochures, direct mail campaigns, folding carton packaging, product labels, you name it. For more information please email info@clearprint.com or call 818-709-1220.
Located in Chatsworth, were convenient to all of the San Fernando Valley, Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley, Santa Clarita, Burbank, Glendale, Los Angeles and most of Southern California.
