A position statement is a sentence or group of sentences that is used to summarize everything that your business indulges in, its profitability, goals and achievements.
In the course of this article, we would be looking at what a position statement is, how to write a positioning statement and every other important information that relates to it.
Without much mouthing, let us delve in.
What a position Statement is not?
It would be wrong to consider a positioning statement as a tagline a strap line, tagline or even a statement of intent. You cannot even afford to call your brand’s marketing brief, a position statement.
You do not write position statements once and paint them on your wall, and leave it for the next 8 years.
In writing a position statement, you do not need to deploy the strategies used in content creation. All you need is the skill and wit of writing two to three sentences. A position statement is not content about your brand’s ambitions for the next five years. If all these are, not what a position statement is. Then, what is a Positioning statement?
What is a Position Statement?
A position statement is a sentence or a group of sentences that sums up the purpose of your business at this point in time. It is all about the here and the now of your business brand. Sometimes, one can philosophically classify a position statement as a living thing that can evolve over time. A positioning statement is not for the consumption of the public; it is an internal marketing guideline of what your brand is all about your product solutions and why you are the best at it.
A good positioning statement is one that is short and price- we are talking about just one or two sentences. Most people would be wondering, how could I sum up my brands goals, marketing objectives and achievements in one to two sentences? Maybe compound exhausting sentences with many words and no punctuations might do the trick? Nah!! just kidding! Big-name-brands like Amazon and Microsoft have very unique and precise position statements.
In the course of subsequent paragraphs, we would be looking at a complete guide on how to write one heck of a Position statement.
How To Write a Position Statement For your Company
Writing a position statement is not something that you can pull through after a 20 minutes leadership meeting. There are three exceptional steps to writing a position statement.
Step 1: Who?
The first and most important step of writing a position statement is to find out what your customers and your brands employees think about you. This is an important stage of position statement writing, as it gives you a clear-cut idea of where you stand as a brand in your positions. This premier step also does well in highlighting areas of improvement for your company.
Step 2: Where?
You have to be very clear and precise in this stage of writing your position statement. You have to be very honest about the market segment that your brand is based in. Also, you have to have to reflect on what your customers and employees said about you in the first stage.
Think about the data that you got from market audience analysis. Your brand in this step, needs to have a clear definition of what their position is in their market in relation to its competitors.
Step 3: So What? ( or in a polite way “Yes, and ?”)
Every brand on this planet has something unique that it brings to its market. Some brands are more customer-focused, while others focus more on their product solution, and trust that to win the heart of customers.
You brand in the third step of writing a position statement should have a “unique selling position”.
The idea behind the “so what” concept is that it’s going to help you get the right concept to expand on, in relation to your position statement.
Your brand needs a little something that you would compel them to keep going and expanding on why what you’re saying in your position statement is correct or important.
This step emphasizes on why you are the best in producing your product solution or rendering that cheeky service. In addition, most importantly, how it benefits the marketplace.
Actionable guide on Writing a position statement
Now it’s all talk and do little, let us now put together all three steps into a single statement and write our position statement. Let us now analytically take a look at the position statement of Amazon Inc.
Who: “for the world wide web users who enjoy ebooks,”
What: Amazon.com is a retail bookseller that provides instant access to over 1.1 million books.”
So what: “unlike traditional book retailers, Amazon.com provides a combination of extraordinary convenience, low prices and comprehensive selection. “
Amazon endeavored to answer all the questions that they had to answer. In the case of your brand, you can structure your position statement to have a different feel.
Using another position statement example
Let us take another dive at writing top-notch position statements. This time around, our use case is a made-up SME company that produces widgets that are used by other companies to produce robots.
Who?
This SME company always sees itself as an approachable and professional firm. It went on to perform audience analysis and customers referred to the brand as technical and reliable. That is not bad, but you would soon see how this creates an image for this SME company.
It also went on to ask its employees why they liked the company and why they were working there. Instead of getting a response of the many benefits of the Friday and coffee mornings, the SME widget-manufacturing brand has to hear that “the company was great to be on the cutting edge and how precise the brand is, all the time.”
Where?
Our widget-producing brand has always seen itself as an average medium-sized company. After the SME company spent some time looking at its competitors, it started to narrow down its definition.
This brand found itself to be more specialized than most of its competitors, and having a better than average customer rating. This good rating was majorly due to how dependent their product offerings were.
This led the widget producing company down the path of visualizing itself not just as a brand that builds widgets. All of a sudden, they are a brand that makes dependable widgets that have high quality.
Yes, and?
Before they went on to perform market research, this company would always have inferred that its unique selling point was a general attention to detail.
However, in the course of its research, it found out that the widgets that it produced for robot manufacturing companies has the lowest failure rate in its industry.
All of a sudden, it did not only have an achievement that made its employees proud, but had a new approach to its market.
Truth is, all this hassle is not for creating a new angle in the market. The sole purpose of the audience analysis and employee interrogation was to create a positioning statement that would guide the brand to its next stage.
At this juncture, it is time to write up a unique position statement for our made-up widget manufacturing company.
Here it goes;
For brands that manufacture high-end consumer robotics, Widgets & co is a manufacturer of the most reliable component widgets.
With this unique position statement, you would see that you have a compound sentence that can motivate your employees. At the same time, give guidance to the brands sales team and show the directors of Widgets & Co where they can improve going forward.
With all these being said, I have not drawn up any conclusions regarding the competitors of this brand in its position statement. Nevertheless, with the phrase; “manufacturer of the most reliable component widgets”, I have made the implication that the brands competitors are unreliable.
Conclusion
Most of the time, it is not easy to research and write a unique positioning statement for your brand. The experience of writing a unique position statement looks like looking into a mirror and reflecting on your brands professional development strategies.
With the aid of a position statement, you can get to see where you are as a brand. It also aids you in making plans on how to improve the overall marketing strategies of your brand.
Writing a position statement can turn out to be a futile indulgence if it does not make you go back, tweak, and change so that your brand would improve in its industry.
