Brand positioning is vital to the success of any company. And this article would show you how to use our exclusive research on brand positioning to position your brand for success With the volume of startups opening their doors rising year after year, it can be tough to determine your company’s position in a market that appears to be getting crowded with branding noise.
Adding to that, the reality that across the world, consumer behavior appears to be becoming more unpredictable in the aftermath of the global COVID-19 pandemic has turned knowing how to position a new enterprise or rebrand an existing company into a Herculean challenge. But despite the fact that the ground beneath many businesses’ feet is less stable than normal right now, there are several brand positioning principles that not only remain true but can help these businesses stand strong.
Here’s How Branding and Brand Positioning Affects Businesses
Branding is the process of building a system that makes your products and services easy to identify by your customers. On the other hand, brand positioning is the psychological value buyers attribute to your business that distinguishes your company from rivals.
Consider the following statistics:
Research by Fundera shows that 89% of customers trust and remain loyal to brands that reflect their values, and 61% of customers are more inclined to purchase from firms that provide original content.
- According to Demand Metric, dependable companies are 3.5 times more recognizable than inconsistent companies.
- According to Consumer Thermometer, 68% of men and 64% of women feel an emotional connection to their favorite brand.
- According to Gensler’s poll, 94% of customers are more inclined to suggest businesses they enjoy to their friends.
- Apple’s Successful Brand Positioning
Apple, the world’s most valuable brand, had a strategic vision that enabled the company to establish itself as an industry leader. Apple’s strong market position has been the foundation of its success. And they achieved that by carefully crafting their:
Core beliefs: Pursuing innovation, design, and creativity.
Brand positioning strategy:
Establishing a valuable experience that engages with customers and takes them into their brand’s ecosystem.
Position:
Establishing a solid track record as a premium brand.
Emotional marketing:
Fostering consumer loyalty and trust.
Segmentation:
Connecting with their clients based on factors like age, gender, income, and geography.
Now that you understand what brand positioning is and how that can make or break your company’s success, it’s critical to recognize that effectively positioning your company will not be simple. So, to help you, we tested numerous brand positioning strategies to see how consumers react to firms that align with a modern position vs. those that align with a traditional one.
So Why Was Our Survey Necessary?
The goal of this research was to discover which brands customers were drawn to and how this varied based on their demographics. We know that the information we obtained will assist business owners, whether they operate small, medium, or big businesses, make rapid, well-researched branding choices that’ll position their organization for success.
To achieve the survey’s objectives, we asked persons living in the United States a critical question: “Would you be more interested in working with a new, innovative business or a historied, trustworthy one?”
Why Ask This Question?
First, you must understand that selecting your company’s tone is one of the most significant and defining branding decisions you’ll make when starting or rebranding your business. Choosing the appropriate tone is critical since it assists entrepreneurs, product managers, and brand executives shape their businesses properly.
Imagine what the market would’ve been if:
- Steve Jobs had called his company Executex and not Apple
- Zappos had remained Shoe store
- Cadabra hadn’t been renamed Amazon
- Blue Ribbon Sports hadn’t become Nike
- Ayds diet candy had been rebranded early
- Hydrox had been given a more appealing name
The tone of your brand influences the overall personality of your organization and people’s perception of it. The tone of your company’s branding is so important that you can’t afford to disregard it when developing a naming strategy. Although numerous tones are available, most of them fall somewhere between these two extremes: “historied and trusted” or “modern and innovative.”
Here are a few examples of popular historied brands:
- Liberty Mutual
- Gucci
- IBM
Here are a few examples of popular modern brands:
- Slack
- Apple
- Robinhood
Our survey is primarily concerned with understanding which customer demographics are drawn to modern brands and which are drawn to traditional brands. We chose to focus on this because deciding whether to go modern or traditional is one of the most crucial decisions entrepreneurs make when developing the identity of their business.
What We Learned from the Survey
Despite the fact that the brand positioning survey’s results were quite foreseeable, the responses we obtained were unexpected and refreshing. Here’s a summary of what we discovered from the 301 persons we surveyed:
People aged 25 to 34 are drawn to modern and creative businesses. More than half of those polled favored new brands over traditional ones.
People aged 35 to 45 favored modern brands over traditional and trusted ones. This group, on the other hand, was split equally between the two alternatives.
People between the ages of 45 and 54, as well as those between the ages of 55 and 65, favored traditional and trusted companies over new and innovative ones.
People aged 55 to 65 were particularly drawn to trusted firms.
According to the findings, men have little to no preference for either modern or traditional brands.
Women, on the other hand, prefer historied businesses over modern ones.
From the 301 persons we surveyed, 153 of them chose historied brands, while 148 preferred new and innovative firms. From the survey’s results, it’s easy to tell that your business will thrive, whether it has a modern or traditional tone, as long as it aligns with your target audience.
What Does All of This Mean for You?
According to the survey’s findings, most young people are drawn to brands that are new, modern, innovative, and original. So, if you want to appeal to a younger audience, give your company a unique, innovative, and exciting brand tone.
However, if your target customers are Baby Boomers and older Gen Xers, it’s important you build a historied and trusted brand. Customers aged 45 to 65 are more likely to buy from a traditional and trusted brand, so make sure your business projects a classic, conventional, and trustworthy image.
The survey also reveals that if any entrepreneur wants to properly position their brand, they must focus on their consumers, products, and brand tone. And the best approach to combining your product, audience, and business is to create a strong brand name, and the best way to do that is to get help from a reputable business naming service.
Here’s a Great Example of a Well-Positioned Brand:
Lululemon stands out as more than just a clothing company. They’ve been providing brand interaction through courses for years, and their most recent partnership with Mirror, a home interactive boutique fitness studio, illustrates that the company’s spirit of innovation is still very much alive and well two decades after it was created.
Grant Polachek is the head of branding for Squadhelp.com, 3X Inc 5000 startup and disruptive naming agency. Squadhelp has reviewed more than 1 million names and curated a collection of the best available names on the web today. We are also the world’s leading crowdsource naming platform, supporting clients such as Nestle, Dell, Nuskin, and AutoNation.
A special thanks to Grant Polachek, Head of Branding at Squadhelp.com for this guest blog article today!
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