Product Positioning Basics

Positioning was first introduced in 1969 and came into regular use as a marketing tool by 1972. A product's position is basically potential customers' opinions about the product as compared to the product's competition. This article reviews a few selected basics about this marketing strategy from its early roots which mainly came from the 1981 book Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind.

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The need for positioning

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Why does positioning work? Because with hundreds or even thousands of advertisements bombarding people everyday, you have to do something to stand out. People's minds start to block out most of this advertising starting at a young age. People start to pay attention and remember ads that are consistent with their prior experience and knowledge.

People will oversimplify and group like things they see together. This means if you use color printing materials, like brochures, they shouldn't look like your competitors' brochures. But, you should try to include an element of your own, like your logo, that people may have seen before and will remember.

Positioning yourself in the consumers' mind

The best way to position your product to consumers is to be the first. People remember the first time they see a product, but will quickly forget the second or third product that is similar to the first. Even if the second product is better, the first product has the advantage of being first. So you should try to be first in your consumers' minds. Now having said that, not all hope is lost. This doesn't necessarily mean that if the market already has products similar to yours that you shouldn't get in there - just get in there in a way no one else has. If you market your product in a way that none of your competitors have, you'll stand out by being the first to use that technique.

If you aren't number one in your consumers' minds, the easiest way to be associated is to relate yourself to the number one company. Ignoring the number one company won't work. Take Avis rental car company for example: They tried for years to beat out Hertz, but they still ended up in the number two spot. So, they used that to their advantage. They changed their marketing strategy to "Avis is No. 2 in rental cars, so why go with us? We try harder." They have now shortened that to "We try harder." They accepted their position and related themselves to Hertz so people thought of both rental companies together.

Reposition the competition

Sometimes there's no niche that you can carve yourself a spot in or that you can be first in. When this happens, you need to reposition your competition. This means you get consumers to think of your competition in a different way. Tylenol successfully did this by getting people to think negatively about aspirin by running commercials about aspirin's negative side effects. Rather than just comparing your product to your competitions' and saying that yours is better, you need to convince consumers to think differently about your competition. Just comparing your products won't change the consumers' minds.

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Product Positioning Basics

Charen Smith writes articles about Internet Marketing. She has an extensive knowledge and experience when it comes to business strategies, techniques and business solutions.

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