Brand Positioning: What Are Reasons to Believe?

{Part 4 of the 6-part 5 Key Elements of Brand Positioning Series}

This is the fourth article of The 5 Key Elements of Brand Positioning Series.? Catch up on the first one, second one, and third one.

What exactly are Reasons to Believe aka RTBs? If you’re a brand owner trying to win over a consumer, then you’ve hopefully identified their pain point and can now confidently offer a solution. But for consumers to believe that your brand is the solution, to believe what you are promising, you need to provide them with proof. Your Reasons to Believe are the proof.

Why are RTBs so important?

Without RTBs, there isn’t any reason for the consumer to be motivated to take action. RTBs articulate the specific things that your brand brings to the table. These are functional and emotional benefits that cover both the table stakes in the category and the delighters that differentiate your brand from the competition.?

Before we get deeper into RTBs, let’s backtrack a bit. There are 5 key elements of brand positioning: the consumer, the pain point, reasons to believe, brand promise, and emotion. Getting to your RTBs requires unearthing the consumer and their pain point first. For a deeper look at how to identify both, check out this article.?

Essentially, seek to describe the consumer target as it relates to their experience in the category with emphasis on attitudes, beliefs, demographics, purchase drivers, etc., and pin down their pain point, which is the problem your brand is going to solve.

Keeping the consumer and their pain point in mind, you can more easily drive out those Reasons to Believe. If you’re struggling with differentiation, begin by assessing your RTBs as they are the foundation of your offering and your brand promise.?

How to Identify Your Reasons to Believe

Reasons to believe are what enable credibility and trustworthiness. The RTBs tell the consumer that you have what it takes to deliver on the promise.? In order to get to that, you must work to find first the most compelling benefits a consumer looks for in a product like yours.? For example, for the overwhelming majority of food and beverage brands, taste will be at the top of the list.? For a household product, it’s most often efficacy. For a beauty product, it will depend on the subcategory – for most, it will be the impact on the consumer’s look, but for some subcategories (like cleansing), efficacy will be top of mind.?

Understand Consumer Motivation

At the end of the day, we’re asking a consumer to make a change in behavior.? And that’s a VERY BIG ASK!? Consumers are spending as little time as possible evaluating products before making a decision, and making a change from one brand to another or worse yet, from one behavior to a new behavior, requires a lot of them.??

We can’t even consider asking for a behavior change if we do not fully understand their needs and wants.? The deep understanding of the consumer that you develop early in the process are critical to unlocking these three insights:?

• What’s most motivating when shopping in this category for these types of products??
• What’s most motivating in the context of the pain point they face??
• What’s most motivating to them as an individual?

And these answers make easy work of what comes next.?

Identify Brand Attributes?

As you work to articulate your RTBs, begin with a list of your brand attributes. You should have an extensive list of attributes for your product and that’s exactly where we want to begin.? It provides us a full picture that makes themes come to life right before our eyes.?

Let's pause for a moment and define attributes v. benefits.?

Attributes are simply a characteristic of the brand or product.? Think of these simply as facts:? It has 50% less sugar.? Unique flavors inspired by Africa.? Patented disinfecting technology.? These are just truths about the product.?

Benefits are a good or helpful result.? By definition, it has some positive impact, such as solving a problem or improving an experience: Flavors your kids will love.? Keeps you full till dinner.? Helps support a healthy digestion.?

Here’s a brief example of attributes for a fictitious brand of potato chips:

Attributes (in no particular order)

• Proprietary air-fried technology
• 20% less fat
• 30% fewer carbs
• Extra crispy texture?
• Just 3 ingredients: potatoes, oil and salt
• No artificial colors or flavors
• No added sugar
• Ten, 1.5 oz bags?
• Packaging is recyclable
• Potatoes grown without GMOs
• Women-owned business
• We grew up eating grandmother’s homemade chips
• We give 10% of profit to potato farmers in Ireland
• Produced and packed in the USA

Crafting Benefit Bundles

Shrinking your attributes down to 3 can feel daunting and scary.? Don’t worry, it’s not!? The reality is that we cannot communicate simply in attributes.? That will create a very transactional and lifeless relationship with the consumer.??

Instead, we create “Benefit Bundles”.? Benefit bundles take a collection of attributes and presents them as a singular thought.? This helps simplify communication and help consumers understand more, and more quickly.

A good benefit bundle creates a succinct and impactful reason to believe. They include a collection of attributes and/or benefits that ladder up into a main idea, helping you to get to relevant, differentiated, and ultimately motivating reasons to believe. To articulate benefits, we need to look for attributes that work together and/or support a benefit – all while keeping in mind what is most important to the consumer.?

Thinking about the attributes of a potato chip brand that I shared earlier, here are some possible benefit statements that synthesize the attributes into compelling benefits:?

1. An outrageously craveable chip made with our proprietary technology that makes it irresistibly crispy (translation - they will taste so delicious, which is what I want most of all!)
2. With just three ingredients, non-GMO potatoes, fewer carbs and fat, and the perfectly sized bag for one, you can feel good saying yes to the chip! (translation - today, I have to say no to chips, but these healthy proof points help me say yes more often!)
3. We honor our Irish chip-loving grandmother in the quality of our product, the family that is our company, and our support of Irish potato farmers (translation - there’s more to love about this brand than just the chips!)

After 20 years of brand positioning work, I’ve found that narrowing down benefits to the top 3 is most effective.? This creates a focus on what’s most important to influence a behavior change. Of course, you want to shout from the rooftops about all the wonderful qualities of your brand! But that’s just not realistic and ultimately, you’ll end up confusing the consumer.?

Getting to the benefit bundle requires enveloping all the other key elements—the consumer, the pain point, and your most relevant and directly helpful benefits. Once you’ve effectively completed this recipe, you’ll have perfected your Reasons to Believe.?

RTBs for Life!

Without articulate, succinct, and motivating RTBs, you’ll struggle to effectively communicate why a consumer should be compelled to choose your brand over another. This is especially crucial for the next phase of brand positioning, which involves taking those RTBs and building your brand promise.

We’ll go all in on the brand promise in part 5 of this 6-part series for brand positioning. Stay tuned!

Hello, I am Kathy Guzmán Galloway! ?I'm The Clarity Wizard ? and I’m on a mission to help people accomplish their greatest goals by helping them see things more clearly. ??I help brand owners increase revenue and decrease risk with brand positioning optimization. ????I provide consulting and coaching for mid-to-large size brands ready to be BIG-size brands.??I am a professional speaker and educator on Brand Fundamentals for those eager to learn.????Follow #PositioningClaritywithKathy and let’s connect!