How-To Effectively Conduct Brand Positioning Research.

Everybody wants to dominate the market with their new brand, but only a few know the secret to standing out from the crowd and leaving a lasting impression. Effective brand positioning research plays a vital role here. 

To conduct effective brand positioning research, begin by applying the divide-and-conquer rule. Select your target audience and divide them into groups and subgroups based on demographics, psychographics, and attachments. Then, analyze their needs, pain points, and perceptions. Identify and use the key factors influencing their purchasing decisions to shape your positioning strategy.

How do we know this works? Our clients all follow this data-driven approach. Using 7-Eleven as an example, our research determined the need to attract millennials to the brand, which led to a 63% increase in purchase intent. 

Why Conduct Brand Positioning Research?

Gaining a deeper understanding of the market landscape and consumer behavior is impossible without conducting detailed brand positioning research. Market studies provoke insights crucial for shaping a company’s market positioning and marketing strategy. Digging into market segmentation, where you analyze customer satisfaction and preferences, provides the necessary data to craft a compelling and resonant brand identity. 

Learning about customer service expectations and past brand or category experience allows companies to tailor their positioning to meet and exceed customer needs. Comprehensive research enables a brand to strategically position itself in the market, ensuring that its messaging and offerings align seamlessly with the desires and expectations of its target audience. 

The following are some of the significant benefits of a detailed brand positioning research: 

• Understanding Consumer Perception: Knowing the exact perception of the target audience allows companies to tailor their strategies to enhance positioning and gain competitive advantages. 
• Differentiation: Market research insights enable companies to differentiate their products and brands, making them more memorable and appealing to customers.
• Competitive Analysis: Studying direct competitors will identify strengths and weaknesses, enabling you to adjust your strategies to position your brand better. 
• Target Audience: Research data provides valuable insights into the target audience, enabling you to tailor brand messaging and marketing efforts to connect with this group. 
• Emotional Connection: Studying the target customer segments reveals what your target audience likes and dislikes. This provides a better opportunity to connect them emotionally to your brand.  

The Core Concepts of Brand Positioning Research 

During brand positioning research, companies must go beyond product features focusing on the brand’s unique positioning. Product features highlight the specific characteristics and functionalities, while brand positioning emphasizes the overall perception and image of the brand. It communicates the emotional, functional, and self-expressive benefits the brand offers, creating a distinct position in the market. 

The unique value proposition is another critical component found on the brand positioning chart. It includes the singular benefits that a brand promises to deliver to its customers. This unique value proposition (UVP) is vital in brand positioning as it differentiates the company from competitors communicating its unique offering to the target audience. 

The final goal of positioning research is understanding the target market;.enabling brands to customize their positioning to meet their audience’s needs and preferences. Market segmentation refines this understanding by identifying distinct consumer segments and their secondary values. 

Companies can build a robust brand positioning model that effectively resonates with each segment this way. Positioning research utilizes these core concepts to develop a comprehensive brand positioning matrix, finding white space opportunities and positioning themselves in the market. 

Research Methodology

Conducting brand positioning research can be a cumbersome project. Most companies use three main types of methodologies to collect insights from the target market. These methods include: 

• Qualitative research
• Quantitative research 
• Hybrid research

Qualitative Research

Qualitative research methods provide valuable insights for companies looking to establish a strong brand position. For instance, focus groups bring together diverse participants for structured discussions, leading to a deeper understanding of consumer perceptions and preferences. This method helps extract different viewpoints and identifies common themes that contribute to developing a robust brand positioning template. 

On the other hand, in-depth interviews involve one-on-one interactions, offering a more personalized approach to gaining consumer insights. Companies can discover individual perspectives, motivations, and emotions through this method. 

These interviews can provide context by asking follow-up questions, enabling brands to refine their positioning with a comprehensive understanding of consumer sentiments and preferences. 

Quantitative Methods

Quantitative research focuses on numerical data and statistical analysis. Surveys play a crucial role in quantitative research, designing and implementing structured questionnaires to gather data from a large sample of respondents. These surveys can be conducted through various data collection modes, including online, phone, mail, and hybrid approaches, allowing for widespread data collection to inform the brand positioning process. 

The quantitative approach enables the measurement of perception and preferences on a larger scale, providing numerical insights that can be analyzed using statistical methods. This data-driven approach extracts trends and patterns, contributing to developing a robust brand positioning framework. 

Combining Qualitative and Quantitative Methods

Combining both research methods helps to extract comprehensive insights by integrating the strengths of both approaches. Qualitative methods, such as focus groups and interviews, provide an in-depth understanding of consumer behavior, brand image, and the target customers’ perceptions.

This qualitative data can then inform the development of quantitative research instruments, such as surveys, which can gather numerical data on consumer preferences and the effectiveness of the brand’s value proposition. By integrating both methodologies, companies can comprehensively understand consumer behavior and preferences, leading to a more compelling brand positioning strategy.

For example, a comprehensive brand positioning study may begin with qualitative research to understand the basics of brand positioning and consumer perceptions, followed by a quantitative survey to measure the impact of different types of brand positioning strategies on consumer preferences. By integrating both methodologies, companies can holistically understand consumer behavior and preferences, creating a more compelling brand positioning strategy.

Conducting the Brand Positioning Research 

After learning the basics, it’s time to dive into the actual research part. Follow these steps to conduct adequate research to craft a highly effective brand positioning strategy and develop a brand positioning statement that presents your company irresistibly to the target audience. Each step is equally vital; therefore, ensure you don’t skip any of them.

Explore the Market for Positioning

A good brand positioning strategy begins with clearly understanding target customers and their needs. A company must know every detail about customer needs, demands, and pain points. To get these insights, companies must start with in-depth market research. 

They must use qualitative and quantitative research methods to extract meaningful data from the target customer group. Social media can play a vital role in reaching niche relevant audiences and engaging them in exciting market research surveys for data collection. Once you analyze survey data you’ll be able to identify key trends, customer needs, and pain points that can inform your product development and marketing strategies.

After collecting the data through brand research, the next step is to clean the data. Remove any outliers to avoid getting biased results. Sample the data based on market segmentation and then analyze it carefully. 

Look for trends, sudden hikes, and dips in consumer behavior, inspiration, and perception. Understand how the target market works. Remember, to conquer the market, you must become a unique brand offering solutions to problems rather than just selling products. 

Measure Unaided Awareness

To measure unaided brand awareness and learn about the customer experience, ask open-ended questions that do not provide brand names or prompts. This ensures that the respondents are not influenced by external factors and can recall brands spontaneously. 

For instance, when thinking about the “best burger in town,” what is the first brand that comes to mind? After getting responses, code or group them to measure the results. Here are the steps to calculate unaided awareness:

• Count the number of times each brand is mentioned.
• Divide the count by the total number of respondents.
• Multiply the result by 100 to get the unaided brand awareness percentage.

For example, if 40 out of 100 respondents mention Brand A, the unaided awareness for Brand A is (40/100) * 100 = 40%. To make your result faster and ensure accuracy use a percentage calculator to compute your unaided brand awareness percentages. After measuring unaided awareness, ask awareness questions that provide a list of brands for respondents to select from. Combine the results to understand total awareness and identify any duplicate responses that may have been influenced by the aided question.After measuring unaided awareness, ask awareness questions that provide a list of brands for respondents to select from. Combine the results to understand total awareness and identify any duplicate responses that may have been influenced by the aided question.

Evaluate Current Brand Positioning

After studying the target market, the next step is evaluating current brand positioning. If you are an existing brand, look in the mirror and see what customers like about your products and brand. Use insights from the market research. 

If you are launching a new brand, briefly ask yourself these questions: Why would someone buy my shampoo if there are brands like Dove, Pantene, and Head and Shoulders? Are we just another bottled water brand? What we are offering is entirely different. 

Remember, it’s not about having a unique product but offering a unique solution. For example, Evian offers bottled water sourced from glaciers, making it unique and luxurious. When conducting a brand positioning analysis, it’s essential to understand what customers appreciate about your brand. When developing a new brand strategy, be careful not to change these factors to avoid alienating your existing customer base.

Analyzing brand perception and its alignment with the intended brand identity is crucial. By assessing brand perception, companies gain insights into the level of brand awareness among their target audience. This allows them to refine the brand positioning strategy, ensuring its desired image aligns with customer perceptions – ultimately strengthening brand identity in the market. 

Analyze Direct Competitors

Understand the competitive landscape by identifying critical competitor and their market share, target audiences, and unique selling propositions. Carefully analyze their positioning strategies and assess their effectiveness in resonating with customers and driving brand equity. 

Determine each competitor’s market position based on their presence and customer satisfaction levels. This reveals gaps and opportunities for your brand to differentiate itself and gain a competitive advantage. 

Benchmark competitors on product quality, pricing, customer service, brand reputation, and financial health. Carefully evaluate their social media presence, marketing strategies, and go-to platforms. 

It will help you objectively assess their strengths and weaknesses compared to your brand. Understanding the competitive landscape and positioning strategies can lead to developing a unique and compelling positioning that sets you apart, enhances brand equity, and drives business growth. 

Derive Consumer Insights

Perform brand tracking and loyalty measurement to service consumer insights during the brand positioning research. Measure customer satisfaction through metrics like customer satisfaction score, net promoter score, and referral rate. This data will identify areas of improvement and gauge customer loyalty. Use brand tracking tools to monitor how your desired customer group perceives your brand. Track customer retention, repeat purchases, and churn rates to identify trends and open space opportunities. 

Common Mistakes During the Brand Positioning Research

• Tunnel Vision: Failing to understand the target audience’s needs, preferences, and behaviors from multiple perspectives. To avoid this mistake, invest time and resources into studying the target market using surveys, interviews, focus groups, and analyzing industry trends. 
• Not Picking the Right Competitors: Remember, brand positioning research is a data-driven approach. Having a few outliers in the data will give you biased results. Therefore, be very careful when picking your primary and secondary competitors. 
• Neglecting the Current Brand Audit: Knowing where your current brand stands is extremely important, yet companies usually overlook this step. The consequences of this mistake are practical positioning, diluting brand performance, and losing existing customers.  
• Ignoring Customer Feedback: Customer feedback provides valuable insights into how your and your competitor’s brands are perceived. Listen to customers and incorporate their feedback to align your brand positioning with their expectations. 
• Neglecting Market Trends: Failing to monitor and respond to evolving market trends, consumer behaviors, and competitor strategies can make your brand feel outdated. Stay agile and flexible, regularly evaluating your positioning to keep it fresh and relevant.

Data-Driven Brand Positioning 

Struggling to differentiate in a crowded market? Wish you could visualize exactly how consumers perceive your brand? We are a data-driven brand development agency using sophisticated analytical tools to build frameworks for continuous brand growth. As our Path to Performance™ process, we can help you discover competitive gaps and how to fill them through distinct positioning. Book a call to discuss your project with our team.