Building an incredible product isn’t the only factor that will make your product your customers’ first choice or drive sales through the roof. Product positioning is the reason customers will choose your products over competitors. 

Product positioning is how you get customers to see your product’s value and uniqueness. It helps you identify the most effective way to market and sell your product.

Let’s find out why product positioning can make or break your sales and how to do it properly.

What Is Product Positioning?

Product positioning is identifying where your product fits in the market, its unique attributes, and why it’s better than your competitors.

Successful product positioning allows you to manage customer expectations and leave a positive impression on them. It enables you to differentiate your product and makes customers desire it.

As a result, it is always best to take a user-centric approach,  when developing a product positioning strategy. First, determine your target market’s needs and desires, and then make your product the solution.  

For example, Customers perceive your competitors’ brand tone to be very formal. You can position your brand as an approachable and friendly alternative.

Why Product Positioning Matters

Product positioning helps you plan how you want to launch your product and how you approach the target market for your product. This guides your product and marketing teams in developing successful product launch strategies.

It asks and helps you answer important questions about your product and target audience. Here are some examples:

• What values does my product provide?
• What are the most impressive features of my product and who needs them?
• What are the different buyer personas for my products?
• Who are my competitors and how big is their market share?
• What do my competitors offer that I don’t?

The answers to these questions will enable you to effectively channel your marketing and product development efforts. It positions your product to be well-received by your target market and outperform your competitors.

Advantages of Product Positioning

• Effective Market Segmentation

Product positioning enables you to identify people who need your product, customize its features, and market it to them effectively.

When you focus on your target market, you will increase customer satisfaction, which will lead to increased customer loyalty and, eventually, brand equity.

• Competitive Advantage

Today’s market is so fiercely competitive that customers can drop your product in the blink of an eye; there are so many substitutes and alternatives.

Product positioning allows you to differentiate your brand from competitors and offer superior product value.

• Boosts Customer Satisfaction

Product positioning enables you to understand what your customers want and ensures that your brand delivers. It helps you meet and even exceed customer expectations. This reduces the likelihood of customer dissatisfaction with your products.

• Improves Brand Recognition

Product positioning provides you with a better understanding of your target audience’s needs and provides you with creative ways to meet them. This allows customers to associate your brand with specific products and services.

For example, the first product that comes to people’s minds when they think of online searches is “Google”.

• Increases Customer Loyalty

Also, building products that solve customers’ problems helps you develop a relationship with your customers. This increases the likelihood of them sticking with your brand because of their emotional attachment and satisfaction.

• Effective Product Development and Updates

Product positioning allows you to identify your target market’s pain points, which you can then use to solve their problems. You can use this information to identify product gaps and new features to add to your existing products.

Types of Product Positioning Strategies

• Price-Based Positioning

This type of positioning uses price as the differentiating factor. This strategy positions the product favorably with the target market by making it the most affordable option available.

Price-based positioning is typically used for products that people do not have a strong loyalty to, such as pens, foot mats, etc. However, this strategy isn’t always sustainable; customers may continue to expect you to lower your prices, reducing your sales profit.

• Lifestyle-Based Positioning

The lifestyle-based positioning selects its target audience based on their lifestyle preferences, values, and interests. To pull off this positioning, you must have a unique brand image with values that reflect your target audience’s lifestyle preferences.

For example, if your typical customer is vegan and values sustainability. Your brand should be eco-friendly and promote cruelty-free products.

• Characteristics-Based Positioning

The goal of characteristics-based positioning is to create a unique product image in your target audience’s minds. It uses your product’s features to position it favorably in the market.

Characteristics-based positioning highlights the benefits and values of your product features. This automatically distinguishes your products from competitors and makes you the more appealing choice for customers with specific needs.

• Quality- Or Prestige-Based Positioning

This strategy helps you position your product as the premium quality in the market. This is an excellent positioning strategy if your target audience values quality over price.

Quality-based positioning positions your product as the superior option, with high-quality attributes such as incredible performance, superior craftsmanship, durability, etc.

For this strategy to work, you have to build your reputation and image as a premium brand. Exclusivity and uniqueness are key factors that make people willing to pay more for your products.

You can achieve this by using high-quality materials, creating unique designs, or limiting the availability of your products.

How to Conduct Product Positioning Research

• Identify Your Target Audience

Determine and understand your target audience. You can start by listing your product features and creating user personas for people who need them.

• Competitor Analysis

Perform a competitor analysis to learn how your competitors position their products. It will help you identify their strengths and weaknesses.

You can also use it as a guide to improve your products and win over your target audience.

• Determine Your Unique Selling Point (USP)

Identify what differentiates your product from the competition and capitalize on it. Knowing your competitive advantage allows you to focus your product development and promotional content on these attributes and their benefits.

• Create a Research Plan

Develop a plan for your product positioning research. Plan the method you will use, the questions you will ask, and who you will solicit feedback from.

• Collect Feedback

Product positioning is based on presenting your product in a way that resonates with your customers. So you need to know what they want, you can use surveys, social listening, and trend research.

Aside from getting feedback on what they want, you should also learn how customers see you. You can do this with brand and product perception surveys.

• Develop a Compelling Story

Instead of simply listing your product’s impressive features, back it up with a compelling story. Brand storytelling forges an emotional bond between your company and its customers.

Make sure your story pinpoints the problem that your target audience is facing and highlights your product as a solution.

• Create a Positioning Statement

After identifying your target audience’s preferences and how to position your product for them. Next, create a positioning statement that differentiates your product from the competition and highlights its unique selling point.

Your positioning statement should be short, simple, and deeply resonate with your target audience.

• Test Your Positioning

First, test your product positioning strategy on a small group to see how they react. You can do this with surveys, focus groups, interviews, and polls.

After testing your positioning, analyze the results to determine its strengths and weaknesses. If you notice flaws in your positioning strategy, modify it to reflect customers’ demands.

What Is a Product Positioning Survey?

A product positioning survey helps you find out how customers see your product in comparison to competitors. It helps you figure out how to differentiate your product from the competition and make it more appealing to customers.

It typically asks questions about your product’s quality, benefits, pricing, and overall value from customers. It also assesses their awareness and recognition of the product in comparison to its competitor.

Objectives of a Product Positioning Survey

• Understand how customers perceive your products in comparison to competitors’ products.
• Identify the target market that’s most interested in your product.
• Discover your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses.
• Identify your product’s USPs that differentiate it in the market.
• Evaluate your current product position strategy’s effectiveness (if any).
• Find out the features that customers value the most.
• Collect feedback to guide your product modification e.g design, pricing, messaging, etc.
• Uncover opportunities to improve your product using customer feedback and preferences.
• Validate or disprove assumptions about your product value and brand image.

Product Positioning Survey Example Questions

• Have you ever heard of or seen Product A?
• Have you ever used Product A, if yes, how often do you use it?
• How would you rate Product A compared to X and Y ( where X and Y are Product A’s competitors)? 
• What features of Product A are most important to you?
• What differentiates Product A from other alternatives?
• What would you like us to improve about product A?
• In three words, describe the kind of people that would be interested in this product.
• Would you recommend product A to your friend and family? If not, Why?

How to Conduct a Product Positioning Survey With Formplus

• Create a Formplus account
• Select “create new form”

• Drag and drop new fields- scale rating, multiple choice, and others.

• Edit questions to fit your product and its features
• Set up conditional logic to tailor the survey experience based on respondents’ answers. 

For example, if a respondent indicates that they would not recommend your products, you can ask them why. If they would recommend it, they move to another question.

• Save the form

• Next, customize the form with your brand asset- logo, colors, fonts, etc.
• Preview the survey
• Choose Share options- form link, email, social media, website embed, or QR code.
• Use the form analytics to analyze your product’s position in the market.
• Modify your product position strategy using customer feedback.

Conclusion

Successful product positioning allows you to outperform your competitors and gain a larger market share. It helps you appeal to customers by identifying their needs and positioning your product as a solution.