De-positioning & mass-niche brand positioning – Tactics from the world’s most renowned brands (Apple, Starbucks, Tesla, McKinsey, and others)
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“Buyers don’t start their buying journey thinking, ‘Let me go out and find a company with brand purpose.’ That’s completely ridiculous. Instead, customers think, ‘I need something. Let me go buy it.’ ‘I have an issue. Let’s find something that solves it.’” – Todd Irwin, founder & CSO at Fazer
In a world where so many brands claim to be customer-centric (1), what does customer centricity really mean? How can organizations better respond to their customers’ needs and drive people’s associations with and recognition of their brands? It all comes down to strategically positioning your brand. Apple and Starbucks are two examples of giant brands that use de-positioning to stand out from their competitors and build devoted relationships with their customers (2). Meanwhile, Tesla, BMW, and McKinsey successfully adopted a different type of positioning called mass-niche brand positioning (3).?
Let’s dive deeper into these tactics, shall we?
Jag Panesar makes it all clear:
“A lack of customer centricity will drive customers away and, over time, businesses will get a bad reputation. These attributes are bound to affect sales and as a result success.
How to be truly customer-centric
Knowing the customer inside out
Whilst it may seem obvious, the first point of call is to define the customer. Go beyond thinking we want everyone and really get to know what they want, how they like to interact, what pain points they have, etc. Using real market research you can create Customer Personas,? which are documented examples of customers. These commonly detail age, gender, occupation, education level, pain points, identifiers, and goals within a marketing scenario, but to be truly customer-centric, data analysts need to be taking these and putting hard-hitting stats and facts behind them.
A PESTLE analysis is a good starting point for those without technology already in place. Think about what is happening in the world right now and how this will affect what your customer wants from a brand. These should also be regularly updated as circumstances change.
Documented customer journeys
Customer journeys are powerful ways to help everyone walk in the shoes of your customers and determine their expectations at every point they interact with your brand and your people. Having this as a document that is shared with all departments allows them to fully understand how to act.
Truly customer-centric brands use the journeys to inform their recruitment decisions, deciding on the key skills employees need to possess and the duties they will carry out within their role.
Centralizing data across all departments
Centralizing data for employees makes it easier to shape practices in line with what the customer wants. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms can be a good investment here. Accenture recently found that high-performing businesses which consistently outperform their competition, are five times more likely to use customer data within the business. CRMs allow businesses to use customer data to create insights and thus use them to inform both business decisions and practices based on customers’ previous actions.
Make your brand more than just a logo
A brand strategy is interdepartmental and it focuses on creating a specific plan to achieve business goals and objectives. When developed correctly, it not only improves financial performance but also improves the experience customers have and provides a competitive advantage.
There are four main things a brand strategy should include:
Todd Irwin explains what de-positioning means:
“You might think de-positioning sounds negative, but it’s not. De-positioning, simply put, is when you highlight a ‘positive feature’ about a brand, and this positive feature shines a ‘negative light’ on the competition. Not in the way that ‘negative campaigning’ does. Instead, you highlight a positive feature that fulfills a customer desire or solves a pain point – one that competitors don’t have or can’t do very well.??
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De-positioning is a strategy that addresses the most important things customers are looking for when they’re on a buying journey: desires and pain points. These are the core reasons buyers buy — number 1A and number 1B.?
Desires: ‘I want or need something for a reason, and I’m going to buy it.’
Pain Points: ‘I have an issue that needs to be solved. I need someone to help me, and it has to be the best solution.’
Buyers don’t start their buying journey thinking, “Let me go out and find a company with brand purpose.” That’s completely ridiculous. Instead, customers think, “I need something. Let me go buy it.” “I have an issue. Let’s find something that solves it.” These motivations have never changed and are not going to change, despite a slate of headlines by agency and marketing leaders proposing that brand purpose is what the customer cares about most or that brand purpose is the driving force behind a company’s marketing strategy. It’s just not going to happen.
De-positioning highlights what your company can do for your customers that competitors cannot while appealing to their deepest needs, concerns, and desires. Your competitor’s weaknesses create the customer need or pain — a gaping hole in the market. You fill that gap by providing a solution that relieves the customers’ pain and satisfies their expectations. This ability becomes your company’s main brand mission and message.”
Ian Sthephens explains:
“The main features of a mass-niche brand positioning are:
Firstly, it must be and appear to be extremely focused, with all the accompanying client benefits of specialization – market-leading expertise, cross-fertilization of knowledge, and deep experience.
Secondly, the market niche must offer massive innovation, growth, and profitability opportunities. This is the most challenging part because it means spotting a market opportunity before it fully materializes.
Third and finally, the niche specialism should ideally have perceived halo-effect benefits in the market (i.e., the market is likely to believe that being extremely good at A implies that you will also be excellent at B, C, and D, even if they’re not your specialist subject).
A niche doesn’t have to be a sector or a discipline, but it does have to exist in the ‘mind of the market’ – you can’t simply imagine it into existence. This applies to all brand positioning strategies but it’s essential to take care with a mass-niche concept not to try to fudge it by leaning on what you do already rather than what the market perceives to be credible.
A quick look at a few other highly successful mass-niche strategic brand positionings helps illustrate the model.
Tesla’s mission is to ‘accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy’ – mainly via electric cars. Electric is still a niche, albeit growing, segment of the global car market. Still, with only 1% of sales, Tesla has managed to achieve a market capitalization greater than the combined value of the nine biggest car manufacturers, who, between them, make up 50% of the global market in sales.
BMW positions itself as ‘the ultimate driving machine’. In reality, not many of us need an ultimate driving machine to take the kids to school or commute to work in traffic. But BMW knows that drivers will happily pay for massively and unnecessarily over-powered and over-equipped cars.
Coming closer to home and looking at professional service firms, some have developed a powerful mass-niche brand positioning that enables them to stand apart in extremely crowded fields.
McKinsey positions itself as being for ‘our clients’ most important challenges’. C-Suite executives have always been willing to pay for what is – and is perceived to be – the very best strategic advice for their biggest challenges.
McKinsey has managed to own this niche positioning better than anyone else, and because every leadership team is likely to identify its own most important challenge, this niche is extensive.
When it comes to adopting a mass-niche positioning, you can’t have your cake and eat it. You must commit or won’t realize the benefits; it’s no good being ‘a bit focused’. That way, you miss out on the market-facing benefits and still must endure the internal friction that any degree of focus automatically attracts in a professional services firm.”
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