Brand Positioning: How Do You Know When It's Right? (5 Ways to Test and Iterate)

A strong brand position is essential for your business.

I know it, you know it… we hear it all the time on LinkedIn!

?? It differentiates you from your competition.

?? Generates more demand for your product.

?? And can grow your revenue (by 10-20% more).

It’s an essential first step for all marketing activities.

You carve out your own corner in the market. And you own it. This then dictates your messaging which flows through your content, ads, website, and so on.

However, picking a position is one thing. But knowing if you’ve picked the right position is another!

Especially if you’re in charge of (or part of) a smaller marketing team. And you’re the one trying to implement all of this, so…

“How do you know when your positioning and messaging are right?”

And that’s why we’re here today…

Last week, I was asked that question above and I’ve been mulling it over. Because I'm going through this currently with our company.

At the start of the year, we were an agency for everyone. And I mean everyone.

I was afraid for us to niche down and pick a position. To stand for something, because I thought we’d miss out by doing so.

See, our website was generic as could be... "Websites that make money for everyone!"

But over the last 8 months, repositioning our agency has taken up a lot of my brain power.

I’ve done a hell of a lot of research... Looking at the B2B market, the competition, speaking to customers, and so on.

We picked a position and I thought that would be it.

However, since we’ve gone live with it, I haven’t been satisfied. And like this question above, how do I know our position is right?!

So I got thinking about a new concept to explain this.

Enter… the positioning spectrum

One word of warning, this concept won’t help you pick a position.

But the aim is to help you change the way you think about your positioning ongoing.

That positioning isn’t right and wrong like a light switch or mathematical equation. But it’s more like a spectrum from weak to strong.

Which could change over time based on many factors, internal and external. Especially if the business is in its infancy and you're still finding your place in the market.

Larger companies are unlikely to tinker with their positioning. But in a smaller company (like ours) where we're still trying to figure our place out, it works well.

When we went live with on our new positioning, I thought that would be it. But we landed somewhere on a spectrum between weak and strong.

And now I'm trying to adjust and refine to move closer to the strong end of the spectrum.

So, what have we been doing to iterate and adjust our positioning and messaging?

5 tactics to test and iterate your brand's position

Below, I run through some tactics to iterate, test and refine your positioning and messaging so you can move up the spectrum - closer to the 'strong' end.

(1) Conversions and revenue:

First off, the most obvious metrics to look at, but still worth a mention… How have revenue and conversions changed since you pushed your new position live? This will ultimately tell you if your positioning and messaging are on-point.

(2) Listen to your customers:

Here are three great ways to get feedback from your customers about how well your positioning and messaging resonates.

User surveys on your website can be quickly put together and set live with HubSpot or SurveyMonkey.

And then interviews with your customers. These can even be formal or informal chats to glean some insights from them.

And we also gain some amazing insights from our sales calls, from prospective clients.

(3) Review best performing content:

This one mainly relates to messaging, but I’ve learnt so much by seeing what content performs best on LinkedIn with our target customers. The questions they ask in the comments.

Using our own agency as an example, I thought B2B companies cared about our SEO service as a whole. But most want to build more links and produce optimised content. So we’ve adapted our offering and messaging to fit these two key areas.

(4) Prototype testing:

You create a mock-up of a webpage in a design tool, with your new positioning and messaging woven through. You then show this to users to get their feedback.

This gives you some great qualitative insights. And it gives you feedback at the design stage before investing a lot of time and money pushing it live.

(5) Gut feeling(!):

This has been the biggest one for me personally. I can tell we’re not fully there with our positioning and messaging. I know it could be more precise. So I’ve been keeping my eyes open and trying to find ways to refine it. That being said, I am giving it time and not changing things too much.

Looking at each or all of these tactics can help you to refine your position and move further up the spectrum.

Summary

A strong brand position is essential for your business.

However, picking a position is one thing. But knowing if you’ve picked the right position is another!

It’s helped me to think of our positioning as a spectrum. We did the research, picked our position, and now it’s time to iterate to keep finding the best fit as we learn more.

Have a question on this? Leave a comment below. Or you can DM me.

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Pssst... want to learn more?

For those of you that don't know me, I'm Steve and I run a B2B web agency.

Helping B2B tech marketing teams unleash their website’s full potential so they can attract high-value customers.

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Steve