Marketing Your Product » Product Positioning In Marketing

Highly regarded marketing professor and consultant, Philip Kotler, is fond of saying: "To get it (marketing) right the first time, the most important steps are targeting and positioning. If you nail these two components of strategy, everything else follows."

Targeting is usually pretty obvious to most executives (although it can be deceptively difficult to do well). You identify who you want to be customers and you go after them. But positioning is another matter. Rarely do people grasp this fundamental concept the first time around, and even more fail to properly implement it even after they understand the basic idea.

So here's the idea. There are different definitions floating around, but perhaps the best one is by authors Ries and Trout in their book, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind. They say positioning is "a succinct message planted into the mind of your customers as to why you are different or better."

Notice it says nothing about features or benefits. It's about what you tell people. Need a quick example? Volvo tells us they have the safest cars on the road. Do we know it's true? Not necessarily. It helps them that they back up this claim with a solid track record of safety improvements, but most of us don't know that. We just assume it's true. They've firmly planted that message and it sticks.

Positioning is the REASON why people buy or choose you or someone else, and they choose you because that reason is important to THEM. In other words, ideally your positioning goal is to find out what people need or want, provide a product or service that provides that need, and do it or design it in such a way that it solves that need or want better than anyone else. Then tell people about that difference - plant that message in their minds so they instantly know what that difference is. If done correctly, they will respond to that message because it best matches their need, want or interest.

Gene Pinder is a 20-year marketing professional who owns a marketing consulting and research firm, PinOak Analytics.

Source: www.articlesbase.com