The Context of Positioning: An “Clearly Superior” Ebook Abstract – Half 1

By Sarah Threet, Advertising Guide

At Heinz Advertising, we worth steady studying and development. We need to be the type of consultants who’re at all times on prime of the newest traits so we are able to place ourselves as a strategic useful resource for our shoppers. Topically, the following e book that we now have been studying is a e book on positioning, “Clearly Superior: Find out how to Nail Product Positioning so Clients Get It, Purchase It, Love It” by April Dunford. This e book, in contrast to most on the positioning matter, teaches you HOW to place your product. 

Positioning your product is very like offering the context by which your product lives. Context can utterly change the best way clients view your product, or the rest; it’s transformative. One of many examples that Dunford supplies is the experiment involving the acclaimed violinist, Joshua Bell. 

The Transformative Strategy of Context 

Joshua Bell is an award-winning musician who sells out exhibits averaging $300/ticket. Provided that context, one would possibly assume if he have been to play publicly on the streets, he would amass an enormous crowd of followers, starstruck on the alternative to observe him play free of charge. However positioning him in a distinct setting utterly modified the best way the viewers perceived him. 

Whereas Joshua performed his violin exterior of a busy subway station, the most important crowd amassed at any given time was solely about 7 individuals. Over 1,000 handed within the 45 minutes he performed, and solely 27 donated, for whole earnings of lower than $40 – not even a sixth the quantity a venue would cost for a ticket to see him on an expert stage. The contextual distinction was the stage on which he was performing. Most folk who handed by merely perceived him as a person simply attempting to make a greenback, and others even discovered his music a bit annoying.  

In a efficiency corridor, Joshua would have his personal signal, an accompanying orchestra, a program that offered details about who he’s and his many accolades, and he can be dressed to the nines like everybody else attending to hearken to his music. The viewers is supplied with the context that tells them why they need to care about listening to this efficiency and why they need to spend good cash. Most individuals depend on a body of reference; they want to have the ability to examine one product or expertise to a different to raised perceive its worth.  

Most merchandise are distinctive solely after we perceive them inside their finest body of reference. The failing for many of us after we attempt to place ourselves or our merchandise/providers is that we predict that the context is apparent. 

The Two Traps of Contextual Positioning 

When we now have created a brand new services or products, we regularly fall into the entice of changing into pigeonholed to 1 positioning context: the one which’s most evident. The fact is there are numerous methods to place the identical product/service.  

Entice 1: You’re so caught on the thought of what you constructed you don’t see when your product transforms into one thing else. 

The instance Dunford supplies is of a baker with a brand new type of cake: “the best chocolate cake on this planet”. The baker is already married to a set of selections primarily based off the thought they will create this nice cake: 

• They’ve determined their audience will likely be these with the revenue and curiosity in shopping for a flowery cake, so they may need to promote on to a prestigious bakery or by means of a high-quality eating restaurant.  
• Their aggressive alternate options embody different truffles, ice lotions, pies, and diverse desserts. 
• If promoting alongside their different desserts, they may possible not be capable of upcharge an excessive amount of. 
• Product differentiators might want to enchantment to an viewers of fancy cake shoppers, so they might need the cake to be made with natural substances, or enchantment to a high-brow style, together with fancy French salt within the chocolate.  

Within the strategy of creating this fancy chocolate cake, the baker has ended up with a product a lot smaller in measurement – a single serving, and they also have wrapped it in a flowery packaging. As a substitute of a standard cake, the product reworked into one thing extra like a muffin, and that contextual shift makes an enormous distinction although the substances are the identical.  

• Their audience now must shift; muffins are extra incessantly seen at espresso outlets quite than fancy bakeries or being offered at high-end eating places.  
• The aggressive alternate options shift to merchandise extra like Danishes, donuts, and bagels.  
• The worth level would possible shift to cheaper, and due to this fact, the baker would need to promote extra of them. 
• Since muffins are usually considered as morning confectionaries, including a great deal of chocolate to a muffin indulges a distinct segment set of morning sweet-tooths. These of us are much less possible involved with the flowery additions, like French salt, and as an alternative care extra about additional chocolate, possibly some caramel, and getting extra energy out of the morning meal.  

Often, the product we find yourself with will not be the product we got down to construct, and it may be troublesome for us to see the gradual transformation and the way the context must shift with the transformation of the product. It’s necessary to be open-minded about what you’re creating and the place it might find yourself, as a result of clients can typically really feel confused with a services or products that doesn’t match with the best way the corporate is positioning it.  

Entice 2: You fastidiously designed a product for a selected market, after which the market modified. 

Markets, and the best way shoppers understand markets, are always altering; opponents are incessantly evolving their choices in response to those market shifts. Typically, regardless of how effectively you positioned your product for its meant market, the positioning nonetheless fails as a result of the market across the product has modified; the context has modified and due to this fact the positioning is now not related.  

In Dunford’s instance, the muffin baker has shifted their product to focus on health-conscious shoppers by filling it with nuts, seeds, and dates, and advertising it as a “weight loss plan muffin”. A brand new competitor opens throughout the road and lots of of your clients are all of a sudden frequenting that institution – why? It seems the competitors is promoting the very same muffin you’re, nevertheless, they’ve positioned their muffin as a “gluten-free paleo snack”, rather more aligned with the fashionable notion of being health-conscious however not falling for weight loss plan tradition. The context shifted over time as consuming habits and classy diets have modified, and the unique muffin baker didn’t reposition their muffin for this market evolution. 

Find out how to Place Your Product Like Your Firm Will depend on It 

We’re incessantly informed there may be one default option to place a product and never that there are numerous methods to reframe the best way we and the patron would possibly consider the product. It’s not typically taught that positioning is a deliberate alternative that requires instances, consideration, and systematic course of.  

In Dunford’s instance of deliberate positioning, we as soon as once more revisit the baker who was attempting to make a flowery cake. This time, the baker reimagines the cake as a conveyable piece of cake one would possibly be capable of take and devour with their espresso on-the-go. What they find yourself inventing is a chunk of cake hooked up to a stick, and initially, that’s how they conceive of positioning their new product: “cake on a stick”. However Dunford asks, “Is it actually only a cake on a stick, and is that the way you need your shoppers to understand it?’ 

What the baker has newly crafted could also be cake as outlined by the substances, nevertheless it’s not cake within the conventional sense shoppers understand cake and revel in cake. Sure, the product incorporates cake, and that’s the half that’s being actually consumed, nevertheless it has a distinct form (it’s spherical quite than triangular like a standard piece of cake) and it’s delivered on a conveyable stick. What makes it distinctive will not be that it’s cake however the different parts of the product. In the long run, the baker sees their product is extra like a lollipop for adults to devour with their espresso, so that they reposition their product as a “Cake Pop”.  

Context Issues – So How do I Place My Product? 

I’ll proceed to write down about this e book over the approaching months and supply extra of the small print realized from April Dunford’s e book. For now, right here are some things to think about about easy methods to intentionally place your self and your product: 

• What’s your audience’s viewpoint of the issue and the way your product/service solves that drawback?
• Is your product/service aiming to unravel a selected ache level you’re conscious already exists? 
• How is your product uniquely totally different out of your opponents and why ought to shoppers care? 
• What are the traits of a client who would actually worth your distinctive providing? 
• What’s the finest market context that may showcase and make apparent your distinctive worth to those that would profit most from it?