SOCIAL MEDIA ST ST STRATEGY AND BRANDING: A SIMPLE WAY TO REMEMBER POSTIONING

In New Media, because there are so many products, positioning is critical. With so many products in the market place, a consumer must clearly have YOUR brand in the consumer’s mind when the consumer makes their purchasing decisions.

To keep positioning simple, brands are positioned in 6 ways.

·        Attribute

·        Price

·        Use

·        Product-User

·        Product-class

·        Competitor

Attribute.  Kelly Rowland sings dance music.   Toni Braxton sings love ballads. Crest  known as a cavity fighter. The BMW car is positioned as the quality car   “…the ultimate driving machine.

Price. Nordstrom positions itself as the quality leader by having the highest price. Burlington Coat Factory positions itself as having nice, stylish clothes, that are “affordable”. They don’t carry the most exclusive brands.

Use. Radio station WEEI in Boston, and all sports talk radio station, positions itself against National Public Radio, an all news station.

Product-User.   Nike designed a shoe just to be used for basketball, and signed Michael Jordan as its spokesperson to position against the sneaker walking and running sneakers.

Competitor. You position yourself directly against a competitor. Hertz had the top ranking.Avis decided to position themselves by service. Their tag line was, “…we’re no. 2, we try harder”.

            After this is done there is a second step in positioning. A marketer asks a second set of questions:

1.     Identify the competitors

2.     Understand how the competitors are perceived and evaluated

3.     Understand the competitors positioning against  you

4.     Analyze the customers

5.     Decide on how you will position yourself against your competitors. You decide what are your strengths and what are your weaknesses. A singer under stood that she couldn’t position herself against her competition, so she positioned herself by making very stylish videos.

6.     Monitor the analytics. This is a strength of social media platforms. You know who came to your sight. You know how long they stayed. You know if your campaign is working by knowing how many visitors came to your site. If someone wrote a comment to you. Another important metric are the likes and you’re dislikes.