Insight
Why is it that the more you try to please everyone, the less loved your brand becomes?
Brand Reduction Exercise - STP Positioning Method
(Text: Wei Hong-ie / Brand Consultant, Process Pro Brand Taiwan)
Why do brands need positioning?
Many business owners wonder, "My products are not bad, my service is good, and I have advertised, but why don't my customers have any impression of my brand? Shouldn't I invest more in my marketing budget?"
Before investing more of your marketing budget, ask yourself the question, "Who and how do you want your brand to be thought of?"
According to Kevin Lane Keller, an academic in brand management, brand positioning is "the activity of offering products, services and images that occupy some kind of prominent and important place in the minds of the target audience."
Defining the "target group" means clearly defining who your brand is speaking to, and how to "get into their heads", which is exactly what brand positioning is all about. The following example of tourism promotion is to communicate the same thing with different positioning:
"Come to the fourth highest mountain in the world, Mount Gili Mazaro, and embark on a spectacular adventure!"
"Mount Gili Mazaro, the highest mountain that can be climbed by human beings on foot, is waiting for you to embark on your journey!"
"Hiking to the highest peaks" is a more successful positioning setting, reversing the unfavorable situation of only being the "fourth" and selecting the "hiking" customer group to have a dialogue, making itself the "first" in the field and successfully attracting non-professional hikers who are eager to challenge themselves, and this is the attraction that good positioning can generate.
Next, we use the STP brand positioning strategy (Market Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning) to illustrate how a brand carries out its positioning strategy step by step.From market segmentation → locking the target market → to customer value clarification → transformation of similarities and dissimilarities → final brand positioning.
Segmentation
“Please everyone, and you will please no one.” - George Stephenson
The first step in brand positioning is to face a fact:You can't please everyone.
The task of market segmentation is to cut a huge market into small market segments in a suitable way. In each small market segment, the customers' backgrounds are relatively consistent, and their needs or behaviors are relatively close to each other, so the brand can target these groups and design strategies and communication methods that are more in line with them.
How to think about compartmentalization
The most common way to do this is to use the four main types of partitioning variables:
Geography: e.g. country, city size, climate...etc.
Demographic: e.g. age, gender, income...etc.
Psychology: Values, life style, etc.
Behavioral categories: frequency of use, context of use, pursuit of benefits, etc.
However, in practice, if you don't have a basic understanding of the customer base, it's difficult to cut out meaningful segments just by imagining them. Therefore, brands must have a preliminary imagination of the target customer base before deciding which variables to use to cut out the segments. It's not necessary to be precise from the start. You can think about the function of the product and look at existing customers, for example: Who is my product designed to serve? What countries are they from? Are they male or female? What is their income level? What are their lifestyles and values?
Sometimes through daily observation or a simple conversation with a client, you can piece together a preliminary picture that will help you think about the right way to slice the market.
Targeting
“Innovation is saying no to a thousand things.” - Steve Jobs
After the market is divided, the next step is even more difficult:Take and leave.
The biggest problem for many enterprises at this stage is not "no target market", but "too many target markets", which makes it impossible to focus resources and communicate effectively to create a clear brand impression.
Thinking about how to choose a market
When selecting a target market, there are four criteria that can be used to assess whether the market is worth selecting:
Distinguishability: The market can be clearly differentiated and size, purchasing power, and characteristics can be measured.
Sufficiency: The market has a certain scale and is worth investing resources to operate.
Stability: This market is not transient and will not disappear within a certain period of time.
Approachability: The brand is able to reach out and deliver effectively.
Furthermore, we can use such analytical tools as SWOT to further think about it:
SW Analysis: Examining our own resources and strengths, which markets can we capitalize on our strengths? Which markets are we at a disadvantage?
OT Analysis: Through trend analysis, think about the opportunities and threats in different markets - which markets have future potential? Which markets have potential for the future and which may pose a threat or risk?
When faced with the possibilities offered by the market, it is easy to think: the more the merrier, the more we can kill two birds with one stone, but as Jen-Hsun Huang said in his graduation speech at National Taiwan University, "Strategic retreat, sacrifices, and deciding what to give up is the core of success, a very critical core. The purpose of strategically abandoning certain markets is to put more effort into serving the customers we care about, and to provide them with more "on-point and sensational" services than anyone else.
In the case of Prosperity's past service brand, at the beginning of the discussion, we used "behavioral variables" to distinguish "creators and gamers" as the target customer group, so the brand positioning clearly conveys that Prosperity is the "ultimate platform for creators" and that the brand is dedicated to meeting their needs.
Read the case: SINYA
See your clients
“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well, the product or service fits him and sells itself.” - Peter Drucker
After selecting a target market, the next step is not to shout slogans, but to understand more deeply what these customers really think. This step helps brands to think about their customers' lifestyles through segmentation surveys and profiles: What are their lifestyles? In what situations does he need you? What do they care more about?
At this point, the understanding of the customer base must be more in-depth than the beginning of the preset, it is best to actually conduct customer surveys, through dialogue to deeply understand the ideas of these people, and to map out their profile, goals and pain points, as well as the most important conditions of the purchase.
In the case of Unimicron's clientele, the "Tourism Creators", for example, we learned through interviews that the ultimate goal of these two groups of people is to break through the limits of their own past, no matter whether they are in the process of creating or playing games, and therefore, we ultimately refined our brand slogan for Unimicron to echo their innermost desires "Breaking through the boundaries, without limits.
Customer surveys and the creation of personas allow brand teams to understand their customers more vividly, so that brand positioning is not just an "internal corporate fantasy", and so that they know what the "meaningful value" is to their customers, and can then proceed to the next step: setting meaningful brand differentiation points.
Read the article: Why is it so important for brands to understand their target audience?
Positioning Positioning
“Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it's about deliberately choosing to be different.” - Michael Porter
Once we have identified the values that our target segments value through segment research, the task of positioning is to determine what value the brand can offer that is not offered by the competition but is meaningful to the customer, so that we can generate a differentiation strategy and "occupy a prominent and important position in the minds of our target segments."
Similarities: Basic thresholds in the eyes of the customer
Points-of-Parity (POPs), also known as points of equivalence, are the commonalities that customers believe brands should have when comparing them. For example, technology brands are expected by customers to be "technologically innovative and reliable," which are not unimportant, but are basic expectations that are difficult to differentiate unless they are far ahead of their rivals.
Differences: what customers are willing to pay for
Points-of-Difference (PODs) are differentiators that really move the customer, make him feel your difference and be willing to buy, and a good POD must have both:
Important to customers, responds to expectations
Brands can deliver, not just claim to
Difficult for competitors to imitate, with certain thresholds
Proven, supported by data, cases, etc.
One of the most important things to note is "responding to the expectations of the customer base" If a brand does not have a deep enough understanding of the customer base, it is possible that the strengths and similarities that we recognize as winning over our competitors may not be important to the customer base, which can lead to a situation where any effort we make to communicate with the customer is like waving a fist in the air, and failing to get through to the other party.
Another possibility is that through in-depth customer surveys, brands can gain insights into the values that "customers actually have needs but have not thought about them yet", and if they can grasp this kind of anomaly and promote this value, the brand can become a very unique player in the market. Taking the example of Pro's past assistance to Mecca, we worked with our team to create the concept of "Everyday Medical Beauty", which is an everyday medical beauty product that communicates with customers with "Charming Everyday" and differentiates itself from competitors.
Read the article: MEGAIA
Brand positioning needs to keep up with the times
"Soldiers have no constant position, and water has no constant shape. Those who can win because of changes in the enemy are called gods." -Sun Tzu's The Art of War
Customers' needs will change, and competitors will continue to innovate. If brand positioning is to be effective in the long run, it must keep pace with the times, and it is necessary to continually review changes in the market, adjust marketing strategies, and ensure that customer value is maintained in the long run from a brand management perspective through the STP strategy: "Market segmentation → locking in the target market → customer surveys to clarify the value → transformation of similarities and dissimilarities → brand positioning. Continuously adjust and keep up with the times.
The essence of a brand exists in people's hearts. The value of STP is not only to help a brand find its place, but also to remind it to keep focusing on its "choices", and to invest its limited resources in the areas that are most appealing to customers. When a brand is able to keep up with its customers in a changing market, it will be able to consolidate its position in their hearts and minds, so that these people will continue to choose you with determination, and the brand will be able to gain long-term rewards and vitality.
That's why brands need positioning.
Literature reference: Prof. Meng-Yen Lin's "Marketing Strategy and STP" course handout.
