Positioning
Many people consider marketing as a means to let creative juices flow. In many ways, this can be true. But what many do not realize is that marketing needs common sense and logic to a certain extent. This applies to both internal and external marketing. Companies tend to lose focus – whether it be because it is having a difficult time dealing with high growth or because a few upper management ‘wanna-be’s’ try something bold (without thinking). This is where positioning comes into play – if you want to survive or prosper, that is.
So what is positioning about? Positioning is a concept that sparked a revolution in advertising. It was developed in by the authors of “Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind”, Al Ries and Jack Trout. The book was published in 1981 and became one of the top sellers or all time. Positioning was the first concept to deal with the problems of communication in an over-communicated society. With positioning you can beat the competition and win the battle for recognition in an overcrowded, media-blitzed marketplace. With this approach, a company creates a ‘position’ in the prospect’s mind, one that reflects the company’s own strengths and weaknesses as well as those of its competitors.
Product positioning is an important strategy for achieving differential advantage. Positioning reflects the “place” a product occupies in a market or segment. A successful position has characteristics that are both differentiating and important to cons...
Hooley, G., Piercy, N. F., & Nicoulau, B. (2008). Marketing strategy and competitive positioning (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Marketing In this day and age is vital for a company to perform at its possible best. Marketing’s main focus is to give great satisfaction to a customer. There are many aspect of marketing, these aspects give marketer’s the tools to help strive for the best possible success they can achieve. They hope that they can create exposure for their brand, product or service.
Retailers rely on product positioning to bolster the value of their products. Determining product positioning requires the analysis of target customers, the market competition, the definition of competitive advantages, and the communications needed to deliver the chosen position to the consumer. Kohl’s is an example of a department store that has successfully deployed a pricing a retail strategy, which evaluates and incorporates price, place, product, and promotion.
Segmentation, targeting and positioning are the fundament of modern marketing (Proctor, 2002, p. 188, as cited in Harris and Schaefer, 2015).
Once the target market has been identified it is important to develop a marketing strategy. In today's fast paced, information overloaded society; conveying a message about a product seems to be more difficult than ever. The consumer is bombarded with advertising everywhere they look. Today advertising not only exists on television, radio, magazines, and newspapers, it can be found on billboards, park benches, in our mailboxes, on buses, taxis, at sporting events, and on clothing.
The business world is becoming more and more heated up as a result of the ever increasing levels of competition. Each and every industry is witnessing an alarming rate in the number of competitors that exist within it. This is further fueled by the increasing world population, which brings about the speculations that the future of the market is rather bright. It is interesting as to how many things are nowadays done based on speculations and future expectations. In the turmoil of it all, marketing has been established as a very effective tool used by various firms to gain competitive advantage over others. As such, each organization has been able to develop its own marketing strategy based on the various things that affect the industry and the nature of business undertaken. Theories and practical research are two major items that form the basis of development of marketing strategies. Rolls-Royce is one of the many organizations that have been in big business for a long time. As such, the company has been able to identify major areas of strength and weakness when it comes to marketing.
A marketer doesn’t just have a plan. Marketers now open up to a wider strategic plan and it’s based on steps that balance out what the market is offering consumers. These marketers must analyze their production with these steps, then make a portfolio of the growth and even their down falls therefore this keeps these marketers to continuously innovate and create even a greater amount of value for their customers. Marketing management functions are discussed along with the marketing mix and strategy.
Arcading to Sue Pulendran marketing planning technology provides for decision-making that is more comprehensive. Marketing planning is a performance paradoxical that measures strategies for the market segmentation. The most important thing about strategic marketing positioning covers the business strategic positioning choice also each business has a different marketing strategy imposed to so that they can gain a competitive advantage over other business in the same market. Skype
Marketing is a very broad term, which encompasses all the activities that help businesses in identifying their customers and needs of their target market, utilising all the communication resources in order to target their target market, eventually persuading them to purchase the organisations products and services. It is much broader than the concept of selling, as selling just includes techniques of direct communication used to persuade the customers to buy the products and services of an organisation. In fact, sales are the integral part of marketing. Marketing also helps organisations to utilise all resources in an efficient way to gain customer satisfaction, which will eventually help in the growth of the company. While, on one hand, marketers tend to focus on the needs and preferences of the customers, they also need to keep a close eye on their competitors (Gillespie, 2010). Companies always look to beat down their competition with providing better products and/or services, or by providing less-expensive goods to the customers than their competitors, in order to achieve or maintain the leading position in the industry. The core focus of this paper is to identify and discuss the core aspects how managers could maintain the marketing activities of the organisation in the global context.
‘Creative without strategy is called “art”. Creative with strategy is called ‘advertising’. Creativity grabs attention. People are flooded with millions of ads each day, but screens most of them out. Creativity allows advertisements to get past the filtering process and appeal to the intended audience. (Altstiel & Grow 2012) Advertising agencies nowadays are forced to think outside the box, by looking at the bigger picture and constantly discovering new ideas and ways to grab people’s attention. A successful creative advertisement results from the ability to incorporate strategic concepts in order to draw the line between plain art and advertising. There are no rules, no patterns to creating highly creative advertising. (Lee 2000)
Competitive Positioning is defined as how you will differentiate your products or services thereby creating a value for in the market. A good positioning is influenced by market profile, customer segments, competitive analysis and methods of delivering value. (Marketingmo, 2014)
Stavros P. K, Markos H. Tsogas & Charles B, (2011) "Positioning strategies in business markets", Emerald 15, (2000)
Brand positioning refers to “target consumer’s” reason to buy your brand in preference to others. It involves identifying and determining points of similarity and difference to ascertain the right brand identity and to create a proper brand image. A significant differential advantage can lead customers to focus on product benefits other than price. Brand Positioning is the key of marketing strategy. A strong brand positioning directs marketing strategy by explaining the brand details, the uniqueness of brand and it’s similarity with the competitive brands, as well as the reasons for buying and using that specific brand. Positioning is the base for developing and increasing the required knowledge and perceptions of the customers. It is the single feature that sets your service apart from your competitors.
The activities consisted in the process of identifying a problem that has to be addressed in marketing or an opportunity to increase the brand image of a business or to increase sales volume by having an increased reach in advertising and formulating a strategy based on extensive market research, segmentation and supporting data is known as positioning in terms of marketing. Positioning is formulating a strategy using tactical development phases to carry out a goal to attain an organizational objective.
As noticed earlier, the formulation of a marketing positioning strategy needs dedication and work from the respective strategist, like patience, creativity, ability, imagination and sheer instinct. It also requires awareness that some times, the best strategy might be not to enter the market.