2. THREE INITIAL COMPONENTS
Before you plan anything , announce anything , or
write anything:
• Develop a positioning statement
• Define Buy Involvement Audience
• Develop a message map
3. THE POSITIONING STATEMENT
• An image or identity in the minds of your target market
for:
• The organization
• Product
• Brand
• Contingent upon identifying and communicating a
brand’s uniqueness, differentiation and verifiable value.
• “Me too” brand positioning contradicts the notion of
differentiation and should be AVOIDED at all cost
4. POSITIONING STATEMENT
Brand Positioning process involves:
1. Identifying business’s direct competition
2. Understand how each competitor positions their business and
products
3. Identify current positioning
4. Compare to competitors positioning and identify viable areas for
differentiation
5. Identify customer’s need and value received from products in your
segment
6. Develop a distinctive, differentiating and value-based positioning
concept
Creating a positioning statement with key messages and customer value
propositions to be used for communications development across the
variety of target audience touch points (advertising, media, PR, website,
etc.)
5. POSITIONING STATEMENT
Product Positioning process involves:
• Define the market in which the product competes (who
are relevant buyers)
• Identify the attributes (dimensions) that define product
space
• Collect information from a sample customers about their
perceptions of each product on the relevant attributes.
• Determine each product’s share of mind
• Determine the target market’s preferred combination of
attributes (ideal vector)
• Examine the fit between the position of your product
and the position of the ideal vector
6. POSITIONING STATEMENT
Outline:
• For … (target customer/person – not market)
• who … (statement of need or opportunity)
• The … (product, brand, or company name)
• is a …(product category or market segment)
• that … (statement of key benefit – compelling reason to
buy).
• Unlike … (primary competitive products or alternatives),
• our product … (statement of primary differentiation).
7. POSITIONING STATEMENT
Process in defining positioning:
• Organize a few working sessions – include marketing,
communications, sales, those who know market and
needs of target customers)
• Use powerful verbs and adjectives that resonate and
differentiate
• Align product with strategic objectives of target
customer
• Don’t stop here. This will improve over time with each
new iteration.
8. BUY INVOLVEMENT – UNDERSTANDING YOUR
CUSTOMERS
• How much time, money, ideas, energy and other resources
customer tries to use in order to buy the product.
• Two types of customer involvement:
• High involvement (rational or emotional) – buyer is prepared to
spend considerable time and effort in searching
• Low involvement – products bought frequently and with minimal
thought and effort. They are not of vital concern nor have any great
impact on consumer’s lifestyle.
• This is a range and not one or the other and can change over
time or circumstances
• Initial choice of a product may be high involvement; but once they
make the choice to buy a brand any repurchase of that brand
would be low involvement.
• Impulse buys would be low involvement
• Your task is to determine how the majority of your target
market relate to the purchases of the particular product or
service
9. BUY INVOLVEMENT
High Involvement / Rational
• Includes expensive business purchases, anything
relating to technological infrastructure, office location
and lease, company health insurance
• On consumer side – tend to be linked to high cost and
includes home, car, major appliances. These can also
vary significantly on the rational/emotional scale from
individual to individual
• For both B2C and B2B markets, advertising for high
involvement/rational purchases tend to be copy driven
with clear explanations of features and benefits.
• You can also add some emotional aspects to the rational buy
decision with some success.
10. BUY INVOLVEMENT
High Involvement / Emotional
• Business purchases in this category include office
design, advertising, and perhaps hiring of certain
employees.
• For individuals, purchases include jewelry, weddings,
holiday travel plans and in some cases homes, cars,
etc. These purchases vary depending on culture, person
and how much purchasing power the individual has.
• Advertising in this category tends to focus on visual and
emotional appeals. Give people visual details with
music.
11. BUY INVOLVEMENT
Low Involvement / Rational
• Things we buy out of habit without much thought
• Typical role of advertising: get people to sample or
switch. To break the automatic habit of spending.
• Coupons, samples, demonstrations, can work well. Also
adding some emotional appeal can also work well.
12. BUY INVOLVEMENT
Low Involvement / Emotional
• Gratification we get from these products is emotional or
sensual; however, it is fleeting and does not last a long
time.
• Includes movies, candy, an entertaining magazine,
birthday card, selecting a restaurant for a special
occasion
• Advertising challenge tends to be the flash promise of
pleasure, or of gratification, the promise of a benefit,
• Strong positioning can help, especially in a crowded
product category
13. BUY INVOLVEMENT
Six Stages of Consumer Buying Process
1. Problem recognition (awareness of need
2. Information search
3. Evaluation of Alternatives
4. Purchase decision
5. Purchase
6. Post purchases evaluation
Not all decision processes lead to a purchase. All consumer
decisions do not always include all 6 stages, determined by
the degree of complexity.
14. BUY INVOLVEMENT
6 Roles in the Purchase Process in corporate
environments:
1. Initiator – first identifies the need to buy a particular product or
service to solve an organizational problem;
2. Influencer – their views influence the buy decision makers
3. Decider – ultimately approves all of any part of the entire
buying decision – whether to buy, what to buy, how to buy, and
where to buy;
4. BUYER – holds the formal authority to selec the supplier and
arrange terms of condition
5. User – consumes or uses the product or service
6. Gatekeeper – controls information or access or both to decision
makers and influencers.
An individual can fall into one or more of these roles.
15. BUY INVOLVEMENT
Isolating the important players involves:
1. Isolate the personal stakeholders – Those individuals who
have an important personal stake in the purchase
decision, making exert more influence that other
members of the buy
2. Follow the information flow – Influential members are
central to the information to them.
3. Identify the experts – Expertise is an important
determinate of influence in the buy.
4. Trace the connections to the top – powerful individuals
often have direct access to top management.
5. Understand the role of the purchases department –
Purchases department is dominant in repetitive buying
situations.
16. BUY INVOLVEMENT
Defining and Increasing Buy Involvement:
• Methods to consider
• News
• Blogs
• Social Media outlets,
• Case Studies, podcasts,
• Forums
17. BUY INVOLVEMENT
Defining and Increasing Buy Involvement
• Before defining messaging or methods to increase the
buy involvement of those involved in the buy decision,
first analyze each stake holder using a chart similar to
the following:
Executive Buyer Technical Buyers Users
Importance
Interest
Emotional appeal
Badge Value
Risk
18. BUY INVOLVEMENT
• Once you have defined each of those involved in the
buy decision from high involvement to low involvement:
• You can define a plan to increase the involvement of each.]
• This is also a very useful tool to create the types of
messages, collateral, or other approaches to not only
increase involvement, but to develop awareness
campaigns.
Awareness is an important part of every plan!
Awareness leads to demand generation!
19. CREATING A MESSAGE MAP
Create a message map for any product or brand.
1. Create a headline
Make it twitter-friendly. No more that 140 characters.
One single overarching message that you want your customers to
know about the product.
What is the single most important thing I want my listener to know
about my product, service, brand, idea
2. Support the headline with three key benefits
The human mind can only process about three pieces of information
in short-term memory
3. Reinforce the three benefits with proof points
Stories, statistics, examples
20. KEEP YOUR MESSAGES:
• Short and to the point
• Simple sound bites
• Easy to remember
• Focused on the User’s need
• Example: A drill manufacturer’s customers do not need a drill,
they need a hole
• Differentiate from the competitors’ messages.
• Analyze their messages and find a different approach, different
angle …. Make it stand out. Make it compelling.
• Listen to the market. They will tell you what is missing or
the short comings. (monitor blogs, social media to get
existing feedback.)
Remember: We are opening up a dialogue with our
customers and not talking at them.
21. NOW START OVER AGAIN!!!
If properly implemented, we will engage in a campaign
that not only creates a compelling story, but also creates
a dialog with the end users
This sparks a relatively untapped tool with messages
that are thought provoking (can invoke their passion)
Be ready to change at any given moment,
If we properly open up a dialog with our campaigns, we
will learn as much from out target customers as they will
from our campaign. Probably more from out target
customers.
