How to position a brand

What positioning is

Positioning is the answer to one question: why should this buyer pick you over their other options. It is a choice made inside your business, then communicated until buyers repeat it. It is the strategy layer described in our guide to what branding is.

Al Ries and Jack Trout popularised the term in their book Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind (McGraw-Hill, 1981). Their central point is that what matters is where your offer sits in the buyer’s mind relative to others, and that this is shaped by what you say and do, not only by what you build. The publisher’s description of the 2001 anniversary edition frames it as shaping how customers perceive a product.

April Dunford’s Obviously Awesome (Ambient Press, 2019) turns that idea into a working method. Her site describes positioning as how a product is different and better than alternatives for a specific set of customers. We use her framework below, with credit. More guides on this topic are in the branding hub.

The five components

Dunford’s framework treats positioning as five connected decisions. Work through them in order, because each one depends on the one before.

• Competitive alternatives: what buyers would do if you did not exist. This includes rival firms, but also doing it themselves, using a spreadsheet, or doing nothing.
• Unique attributes: what you have that those alternatives lack, such as a capability, a method, a credential, a guarantee or a speed.
• Value: what each unique attribute lets the buyer achieve. A feature is not value until it is tied to an outcome the buyer cares about.
• Best-fit customers: the buyers who care most about that value, and who are easiest to win and keep.
• Market category: the frame that makes your value obvious, so that buyers know what you are and how to judge you.

Start from the job, not the demographic

A common failure is to describe the customer by age, size or industry and stop there. Clayton Christensen, Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon and David Duncan argued in the Harvard Business Review (September 2016) that firms know a lot about customers, yet innovation still fails, because they focus on the product instead of why customers choose. Their book Competing Against Luck (Harper Business, 2016) develops the idea of jobs to be done: customers hire a product to do a job in their life.

For positioning, the job tells you which alternatives are real. A buyer who needs “someone to take tax worry off my plate” may compare an accountant with software or with a relative, not only with another firm. List the job in the buyer’s words, then list everything they could hire for it.

Interview five recent customers. Ask what was happening when they started looking, what else they considered, and why they chose you. Their words are better copy than anything you will invent.

A step-by-step method

Set aside half a day with the owner, one person who sells and one who delivers. Use a wall or a shared document. Do not start with the tagline.

• Step 1: List the alternatives, starting from the job the buyer is hiring for. Ask five recent customers what else they considered or would have done. Include doing nothing. Aim for four to six.
• Step 2: List your attributes that those alternatives lack. Be literal and checkable. “Replies the same business day” can be verified. “Great service” cannot.
• Step 3: For each attribute, write the value in one sentence starting with “so that”. Keep only the ones a buyer would pay attention to.
• Step 4: Pick the best-fit customers. Look at your last 20 customers and find the 5 who were easiest, happiest and most profitable. What do they have in common?
• Step 5: Choose the category. Ask: if a buyer thinks of us as a member of this group, do our strengths become obvious? Sometimes the right category is narrower than the one you use today.
• Step 6: Write the one-sentence statement and test it on three people outside the business. If they cannot repeat it, simplify.

A worked example

Take a fictional bookkeeping practice that currently says “friendly accountants for small business”. Step 1 finds that buyers actually compare it with cloud accounting software, a part-time in-house hire and other small practices. Step 2 finds two real attributes: it specialises in tradespeople, and it reconciles weekly, not quarterly.

Step 3 turns those into value: owners see their cash position every week, so that they can price jobs and plan payroll without guessing. Step 4 shows the best clients are sole traders and firms of up to 10 staff in building trades. Step 5 shifts the category from “accountants” to “bookkeeping and cash-flow support for trades”.

The result is a sentence such as: “Weekly bookkeeping and cash-flow reporting for small building firms.” It does not promise a result. It says what, for whom, and how it differs from software and from a general practice.

Making the positioning stick in buyers’ memory

A good statement only works if buyers remember it when they need you. The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute describes mental availability as buyers’ ability to recall a brand when shopping in a category, and recommends linking the brand to more of the thoughts and motives that prompt a purchase, which it calls category entry points. For a bookkeeper, those might be “the tax deadline is close”, “I lost track of what clients owe me” or “I am about to hire”.

Write one page or one section for each entry point you have decided to own, and use your distinctive brand assets, such as a colour, a phrase or a recurring image, so the page is recognisable at a glance.

Do not forget physical availability. If the positioning attracts the right person but they cannot book, call or find pricing, you lose the sale. Match the promise with an easy next step.

Why assistants repeat clear positioning

Assistants compose answers from text they can read about your business. A page that states plainly who you serve and what you do gives them a sentence they can repeat. A page of general claims gives them nothing to quote.

That makes positioning a foundation for answer engine optimization. Our guide to what AEO is explains how assistants choose what to say. Keep the same sentence on your homepage, About page, profiles and structured data. Nobody can guarantee that an assistant will name you, but vague positioning makes it much less likely.

Revisit the statement when your alternatives change. A new competitor, a new tool or a shift in your own services can move the answer.