You’ve put in the countless hours to perfect your product, and worked hard to develop an effective product launch plan. You’re almost ready to execute and go-to-market, but you still have one big step to complete before you write the news release headline, pick your keywords for SEO, or design your new webpage. You need to define your product’s brand.
Determining how to position your product is vital to setting it apart from competing products, describing what the product uniquely brings to the marketplace, and clearly communicating its benefits. We recommend a four-step process for crafting your product’s brand that includes:
This blog covers step one of the process: How to create a product positioning statement. For more on steps 2 and 3, download the free ebook, Smart Marketing for Engineers: Product Launches.
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.
To get started, use the following approach to define your product positioning statement (note: if you’ve completed a persona exercise, this step will be much easier).
To thoroughly answer these questions, you may 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 doing a formal research project. Don’t assume you know it all — validate your ideas and thoughts. Through this process you may find yourself learning even more about your customers’ care-abouts and gaining insight that might even effect future features of your product itself.
Getting agreement on the answers to these questions is tough work. There will be debate, compromise, and in the end – let’s hope – consensus on the best words and phrases that answer each of these questions above. This positioning exercise, while potentially arduous, is worth the effort as it makes the rest of the branding process much easier and ensures consistency of message throughout the launch.
Once you have these key questions answered, take this research and brainstorming, use the following structure to pieces all the components together into a cohesive positioning statement:
"For (Target Customer) that (Needs/Care-Abouts), our product or company is a (Category/Solution) that (Benefit). Unlike our competitor, our product/company is (Unique Differentiator)."
To illustrate this process, we have included a product positioning example that we developed for Silex Technology.
These statements, once completed, formed the foundation of external marketing messaging, including the product website and collateral.
Once finalized, you will (and should) leverage your product positioning statement regularly. Your sales force will become masters at delivering it. It will become incorporated into your marketing efforts. Get it right at the beginning and save yourself what could be a very costly mid-stream change down the road. And with that in place, You are now ready to turn your attention to your product marketing plan, beginning with audience personas, a content plan along the funnel and channel prioritization.
To learn more about successfully launching a product, read our ebook, Smart Product Launch.
TREW is a marketing agency dedicated to reaching engineering and technical audiences through a range of marketing initiatives. Contact us today to learn more about the services we offer.