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Congratulations!  You’ve created a product, figured out your pricing and distribution model (not to mention a ton of other details), and are ready to bring it to market. Or almost ready.  First you need a positioning statement.  The following blog outlines the what, why and how of creating a positioning statement.  This information was derived from a recent presentation by TREW Marketing at the Central Texas Funding Network Symposium.

What is a positioning statement? A statement or set of statements specifically used to create an image in the mind of your customers.  It is how you want them to visualize your product in relation to the market and competition.

Positioning statements should be created before beginning your marketing efforts, since it gives focus to your marketing efforts and influences your company branding.  Your positioning statement is a core component of marketing activity.

How do I go about creating my positioning statement?

Step1:  Deep thinking and research. This includes asking yourself some questions, such as “What business am I in, and how is it different?”  ”Who is my target audience, and what needs do they have that I can solve?”  ”What are the key benefits of my solution?”  To thoroughly answer these questions, you will need to do some market and customer research.  This could be done informally through customer interviews, social media, and Google searches, or more formally by engaging a formal research project.  Don’t assume you know it all — validate your ideas and thoughts.  Through this process you may find yourself aligning your product’s strengths to customer needs and care-abouts, perhaps even tweaking the product itself.

Step 2:  Create Your Positioning Statement v1.

Congratulations!  You’ve created your first positioning statement.  Have I mentioned yet that this is an iterative process?

Step 3:  Repeat steps 1 and 2. You will leverage your positioning statement like crazy, once finalized. Your sales force will become masters at delivering it.  Your marketing efforts will incorporate it into everything they do.  Get it right at the beginning and save yourself what could be a very costly mid-stream change down the road.

Step 4:  Unleash your marketing communications strategy, beginning with the communications brief and message matrix.  This is one of several areas where your positioning statement (and underlying research data) heads next.  Your internal marketing leader or TREW Marketing Virtual Marketing Director will create segmented messages based on identified targeted audiences.

In summary, creating a thoughtful product positioning statement will take you far down the road to success, and prevent costly mistakes once moving into sales and marketing execution.  TREW Marketing offers coaching services to help you develop your product positioning statement and make the transition into marketing strategy.  Please contact us at info@trewmarketing.com for more information.

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