The issue of "positioning" actually covers many aspects - products, population, prices, etc., which will involve the issue of "positioning". So in the process of positioning a company or brand, do you know how to build corresponding positioning strategies?

2025/07/0116:03:44 hotcomm 1732

The issue of "positioning" in

actually covers many aspects - products, population, prices, etc., which will involve "positioning" issues. So in the process of positioning a company or brand, do you know how to build corresponding positioning strategies? In this article, the author summarizes the "positioning" issue and let's take a look together.

"Positioning, really not suitable for startup companies", it received feedback from many readers and unconsciously launched a major discussion on positioning theory .

Under the current economic environment, there is still a boss who can calm down and do some pure content communication - this is rare.

For this reason, I roughly reviewed the communication about positioning during this period. When sorting out the communication materials with everyone, I found that the content was as much as 58,000 words. After most of the day of editing and sorting, I have summarized 8 questions, about 8,000 words. The article

is a bit long, but I hope it can bring real value to one or two readers.

1. What is the positioning?

In fact, most people do not understand the real positioning enough.

First of all, we should be clear that positioning is actually a very competitive concept . The premise it proposes is that in order to enable our brand to gain greater competitive advantage, the positioning is that competitors do not have and competitors do not have.

Secondly, is still the key to consumer communication . Because positioning means determining your unique existence in the mind of consumers, your positioning has a huge attraction to them.

Finally, is an organic combination of an enterprise management system .

The so-called positioning actually includes product positioning, population positioning, price positioning, regional positioning, business positioning, scale positioning, and promotional positioning.

and "drinking Wanglaoji for fear of getting angry", "Chinese pickled cabbage number Fuling , Fuling pickled cabbage number for Wujiang", "Creator of cup milk tea"... These well-known positioning theory products are actually just brand promotion positioning.

2. Why do you need to do positioning?

As the saying goes, if you choose the market, you can succeed half of it. positioning is to choose the market.

Due to its own differences and the increasingly personalized consumer value, differences determine that enterprises implement market positioning and characteristic operations - that is, market opportunity choices.

But in the differentiated needs of multi-circle consumers, our brand cannot be the best in all aspects - this requires that we can be outstanding in one aspect, and even achieve unique results in .

In 1995, Michael Trisey and Fred Wellsmar, consultants at CSC index system, published the book "Cultivation of Market Leaders". The value standard model established in

book shows that has become a market leader in one aspect of three aspects: product leadership, excellent management and friendly service, and the other two aspects can be performed appropriately.

Later, business leaders successively proposed more specific factors in this regard.

For example, in 2001, when Fred Crawford was the executive vice president of Capgemini EY, the largest consulting company in Europe, he wrote the "Myth of Excellence: Why do big companies never try to do their best in all aspects? 》. In the book

, the author's research on more than 100 successful companies in the world concluded that successful companies provide customers with corresponding benefits in five aspects, including price honesty, product stability, accessibleness, unique experience and service compliance commitments.

But they don’t need to do all aspects of the five interests better than their competitors, they do very well in one aspect, the other aspect is excellent in the industry average.

Another example is that in 2004, Willard N. Ander and Neil Z. Stern, partners of McMillan Doolittle, a US retail consulting firm, published the book "Winning Retail: A Model for Sustainable Development in Retail".The view in the book

shows that among the five elements of rich variety, low price, fashionable and popular, convenient service and fast speed, one element is the best, and the other four elements only reach the average level or pass level.

Although these elements are more about combining the service capabilities of retail stores, the main body that is ultimately fed back is still the consumer product brand.

3. How to segment the market?

If there is a brand trying to meet everyone's needs, it will eventually fall into inevitable trouble.

and confirms a track, which is to analyze the market, including consumer analysis, industry analysis, and competitor analysis. In the analysis process, there is also a long-term market environment research to predict future trends in the next 5-10 years or even longer, thereby prompting enterprises to formulate medium- and long-term development strategies.

How to choose market opportunities has become the key point for entrepreneurs to win at the starting line.

You see, there are different market segments behind each field incision and pattern incision. Only when a brand first anchors its own market segment can it target its target in the later stage of product, marketing and other aspects.

1. Geographical subdivision

Consumers who are in different geographical environments often have different needs and preferences for the same type of products, so that their reflections on the company's product prices, sales channels, advertising and other marketing measures are often different.

The most outstanding performance is that consumer goods such as cooling down the Department of Prevention and warm-proofing, often segmented in markets according to different climate zones; consumer goods such as household appliances and textiles are often segmented in markets according to urban and rural areas; and for brands of basic daily necessities and daily consumer goods, the market will be segmented in markets according to population density.

2. Population segmentation

Determining the target population is the most commonly used method of market segmentation by consumer brands. There are particularly many variables in its subdivision, including age, gender, family population, income level, occupation, education level, religion, ethnicity, nationality and even social class.

The following are several common population segmentation methods:

1) Age segmentation

Age segmentation is a segmentation variable that many consumer brands have reached consensus. Especially in the new consumption era, the new group we anchor is the post-90s and even the post-00s generation.

In essence, new consumption depends on age segmentation.

2) Gender subdivision

target populations are divided by gender, mostly male and female, but in actual business operations, there are different categories.

If your brand produces men's home pajamas and men's business shirts, who is your target consumer group? Through experience, the final purchase decisions in these categories are often made as women groups of wives.

This means that your product design, your store decoration and display need to care more about the thinking logic and experience of female consumers.

3) Educational level subdivision

People with different educational levels have obvious differences in consumption structure and rational decision-making.

4) Income segmentation

A person's income level will directly affect his consumption desire and expenditure model.

From the current situation of residents' income in my country, focusing on low-income people is the biggest market.

Tang Min, a famous economist and consultant of the State Council, said in a series of interviews with Sohu Finance and Economics magazine that the number of middle-income groups in China is now between 200 million and 300 million, and the number of wealthy groups is only between 10 million and 20 million. Even if this group of people is counted as 400 million, China still has 1 billion low-income people.

5) Family Life Cycle Subdivision

In the population segmentation, we can also start from the family life cycle to subdivide the life scenes of the population at each stage such as single period, newlyweds, raising period, empty nest period, etc.

3. Behavior segmentation

In common market segmentation, consumer behavior variables can also affect the development of the brand. First of all, there are differences in consumers' lifestyles, and the most obvious one is their attitude towards life.

html The younger generation born in the 190s, compared with the previous generation of consumers, belongs to the consumer group that is willing to socialize and pursue new trends. This group of people are getting closer to Western consumption methods, pursuing improving the comfort level of life, so they are willing to consume ahead of time.

According to this attitude towards life, many payment tools and supermarkets have begun to provide consumers with credit consumption services. Now when you go to the street to buy a roasted sweet potato, you can use Huabei to pay.

is actually the difference in benefits that consumers seek during consumption.

The difference in interests is actually the personality of everyone’s needs. In the 1980s and 1990s, when Shanghai people were still washing their hair with soap bubbles, a brand called Fenghua appeared and proposed that shampooing and hair care should be done separately.

Immediately afterwards, Procter & Gamble entered the Chinese market with a shampoo called " Haifei Si ". The advertising slogan "Anti-dandruff power" caught Fenghua off guard.

Later, various functional shampoos began to be placed on the supermarket shelves when removing dandruff, softening, oil removal, moisturizing, and anti-detachment. But it is irrefutable that these are the benefits consumers seek when purchasing shampoo.

In fact, market segmentation can be conducted on from different angles.

No segmentation method can be suitable for all brands. We must find out the most important factor affecting the purchasing behavior of consumers , or consider several factors in a comprehensive way.

4. Is your segmentation really reliable?

Due to different market segments and different products and services, the production costs and sales expenses we should bear may fluctuate differently. How to weigh the revenue and costs under market segmentation?

This requires to verify the market segmented by the team before determining the target market.

is edited by Professor Zeng Qingjun and Science Press in "Retail Science" published in 2012, four reference standards for market segments were proposed.

1. Recognizable

Recognizable that is, the purchasing power and size of the market segment can be identified and measured.

At present, the TAM methodology is generally recommended to measure the size of the market segment.

TAM is actually the abbreviation of Total Aaddressable Market, which means the total potential market amount. It refers to the total number of potential users of a specific product/service in the market.

This data is built under ideal conditions that there are no competitors and all markets are reachable. For example, if you open an airline, it can theoretically serve 1.4 billion Chinese people. The calculation results of

TAM directly influence the two scale indicators in the future:

The first is the serviceable market (SAM). SAM indicates the market size that the company's products/services can occupy in TAM. For example, in theory, the aviation industry can serve 1.4 billion Chinese people, but in reality, 1 billion people have never made aircraft.

so its SAM market is only 400 million people.

The second is the Available Market (SOM). This refers to the market currently acquired by the company's products/services, or the market to be acquired in the future. It is part of SAM.

Just like among the 400 million consumers who have a demand for planes and are willing to pay for it, your competitors have actually accounted for 50%. This group of people may be difficult to transfer to your product/service, so you can say that SOM is set to get 20% of the population first in SAM.

Under full competition, SOM is always smaller than SAM. The former can represent the company's market potential for a certain period of time, while the latter is the target market share of this demand.

2. Profitability

is easy to understand. The capacity of the market segment must be able to ensure that the brand obtains sufficient economic benefits and at least make money. Otherwise, this segment will ultimately be meaningless.

Do you still remember the example of Shanghai Parent-Child Department Store? In the 1980s, the business area of Shanghai parent-child department stores reached 5,000 square meters, and the goal was to make the children's market segment in a high-profile manner.

But in that era, the scale of the children's segment was not large, and consumers did not take children to shopping malls to play creative picture books, water parks or building blocks frequently.

so much so that this department store does not have enough target consumers to arrive, and the revenue generated per unit area is not enough to cover the cost, which ultimately led to the project failure.

3. Approachability

Approachability mainly refers to whether we can enter this market with our current capabilities when choosing a segmented market. The most basic manifestation of

is that our marketing actions can be seen by consumers in segmented markets; our products and services can reach consumers in segmented markets through certain channels.

4. Distinguishability

If a segment's response to marketing strategy is basically not distinguished from other markets, it is not necessary to treat it as an independent market. The distinction here of

actually requires consumers to distinguish it themselves. In many market segments, brands will use some clever words to guide consumers to create distinctions, thereby developing an unnecessary market segment into an independent market.

shampoo is a typical case.

Before 2007, people's subdivision of shampoo was at most focused on anti-dandruff, anti-detoxification and other functions. But in April of that year, Unilever launched the first "Dandruff Shampoo of Men and Women" in the country, " Qingyang ".

allows consumers to believe in the discrimination of the market segment and open up more opportunities in the fierce market competition.

5. How many segments do you want to provide services?

After we effectively segment many market opportunities, choice is actually the most difficult problem.

American marketing scholar Russell Halle once divided the toothpaste market into four types of interest segments, namely, anti-cavitation and cleaning, the taste, packaging, and economical prices of toothpaste. These four needs of

can all become their respective market segments, but how many can you handle? We cannot try to attract all market segments with a try-through mentality, it requires a self-evaluation process.

1. Market Potential Assessment of the development potential of a segment of

In fact, it requires testing the judgment of entrepreneurs and investors. Nowadays, people's mainstream method for the future potential of the market is to horizontally compare the development of overseas markets.

is like Lanzhou ramen that was popular in mid-2021. Many investors have cited a set of data to show that the current domestic catering chain rate is about 10%, while the United States is as high as 50%, which means that the catering chain still has a lot of market space in my country.

But in the Chinese consumer market, there is also an entrepreneurial thinking of "individual cases" .

, that is, as long as I feel there are demands and pain points here, I can find at least tens of millions of users in China to have the same idea. Once no one else provides a solution to this idea, it is a new entrepreneurial opportunity.

mouthwash is such a category.

A survey report released by " Forbes " in 2017 showed that China's annual per capita oral personal care consumption is only US$2.7, far lower than other major consumer countries for oral cleaning products.

Among them, the main consumer categories are toothpaste and toothbrush, and there are very few mouthwash.

Is this the user has no demand, or is the brand not providing it in time? Johnson & Johnson Li Shidelin searched the mouthwash category on the domestic online platform and found that few Chinese brands provide such products.

So during Double Eleven in 2018, Johnson and Johnson was developing products specifically for Chinese consumers for the first time and creating a mouthwash.

Generally speaking, Johnson & Johnson's new product development cycle is 24 months, and for this mouthwash, the development cycle is shortened from the development of new formulas to the product launch to 5 months, creating the fastest record of the launch process of Johnson & Johnson's new imported products.

Tmall Supermarket data shows that a 1700ml/piece Li Shidelin Binglan Jinshuang mouthwash set has a monthly sales volume of more than 20,000 pieces and more than 100,000 repeat customers.

2. Market Structure Evaluation

In order to ensure the optimization of choosing a target market, in addition to evaluating the scale and development potential of the market segment, we also need to place the company itself in the entire market structure to compare.

Only after a clear understanding of the entire market competition environment, the company's own resources and competitor performance can we decide whether this segment is worth entering.

Generally speaking, Porter Five Forces Model is the most commonly used market structure evaluation tool.

supplier bargaining power;
buyer bargaining power;
new entrant threat;
alternative threat;
degree of competition among industry.

3. Market targets and strategies for judging

Many times, choosing whether to enter a target market is not simply considering market potential and competitive landscape.

Sometimes, brands need to choose whether to enter certain market segments based on their medium- and long-term goals and strategies, even if they sacrifice some short-term interests for this.

From the perspective of goals, the most common description is that in order to achieve a more valuable purpose, the company is willing to make strategic losses in a certain business.

typical case is JD Logistics . In order to compete with Alibaba series e-commerce, Liu Qiangdong proposed to spend US$1 billion to build his own logistics at the board of directors in 2007. You know, JD raised less than US$20 million at that time.

His logic is very clear. If JD.com wants to grow bigger, it must win more users. Among the complaints received by JD.com that year, more than 50% of them were slow arrival and damaged goods. In addition, no third-party express delivery on the market could do a good job in collecting payments, but people did not have a strong sense of trust in e-commerce at that time, and cash on delivery was the mainstream. The decision of

has caused great controversy. Many people believe that JD.com uses this money to fight a good category battle faster than doing logistics.

But it is precisely because of this strategic analysis that JD has the opportunity to grow rapidly in the later stage.

6. How to enter the target market when choosing the right target market?

The most difficult question in the world is the multiple-choice question.

After the long and meticulous market segmentation and evaluation, there are often several target markets worth doing in front of entrepreneurs. How to choose has become the first hurdle to test entrepreneurs.

There are five entry modes for reference here:

1. Large single product mode

For more companies, they are eager to cover all markets, but they do not have enough ability to provide corresponding products/services. The helplessness of missing opportunities in

is like a child who goes to the mall in Chaoyang District to play the game of "catch snacks in the air" when he sees a pool of snacks that may be his own, but because his arm span is not long enough, he can only successfully grab three or five packs.

2. Small circle mode

corresponds to large single products. The small circle mode, that is, "multiple products to a single group". The brand provides various products and services they need to meet a certain group of people.

This is a bit like Meituan Dianping , anchoring the platform for people who eat, drink and have fun. They launch takeaway services if they need to takeout, and provide taxi functions if they need to takeout.

3. Full coverage mode

full coverage mode is easy to understand, which is to provide different products/services for different target groups (markets), and fully cover the current market.

This is a multi-product to multi-population business, and the front line is very long. If the company does not evaluate its own resources well, this model is not easy to implement, so this is basically the way for oligopoly -level enterprises to enter a new market.

4. Scatter mode

Scatter, as the name suggests, is to selectively layout several markets based on their own comprehensive capabilities in all determined target markets, and launch their respective products/services accordingly.

This is also a multi-product to multiple people, but the corresponding investment scale is smaller than the All-in model.

5. Base point mode

Base point mode is a small and beautiful entry mode, which basically only provides a single category for a single group of people.

is to give up. Knowing how to abandon most of the seemingly promising markets, you will get more energy to polish your fist products, thereby enhancing the appeal of this product in the market.

Firmly a product and stick to a group of users, and you will gain stronger stickiness and more repurchase.

The Internet gives it the name Saturation Attack.

7. How should you position yourself in the target market?

If a brand is compared to a car, to ensure that it operates smoothly and reliably in the fierce market competition, four-wheel positioning must also be carried out.

We compare the four key factors that affect brand development to the four wheels of a vehicle: users, products, pricing, and marketing.

1. Customer targeting

target users are the basis for the survival of the brand. Without this group of people paying for it, no brand can survive for a long time. Therefore, customer positioning is generally about solving the problem of who the brand provides products/services and how to build brand value propositions.

There are too many brands who think too simply about this issue. They generally believe that they serve high-income groups and middle-income groups, and at most they will add detailed labels such as age group, education level, and occupation. In the process of

, we also need to understand the user's life and work, and understand the user's more concrete pain points, and even the user's interests and needs. Contents such as

can help brands sort out products/services, think about how to help users relieve the impact of pain points, and even create value benefits for users.

2. Product Positioning

According to the value proposition canvas proposed by Alexander Osterwald, once the brand completes the positioning and insight of the target user, the positioning of its product/service will take shape.

Generally speaking, product positioning atmosphere product level positioning and product combination positioning.

product level is dominated by the target user consumption level. Bebebus' product level and Feitian Moutai's product level are both moving higher, making its own high-end brand stand firm in the industry.

product portfolio is more of a model for verifying brands to obtain profits. The product portfolio positioning of Gillette Razor is believed to be a well-known business case, so there is no need to discuss it again here.

3. Price positioning

Price positioning is a way to seize the user's mind by using price as the first intuitive symbol. Such positioning can even represent a category and establish an image of a price category in the user's mind.

4. Promotion Positioning

The essence of promotion is a kind of consumer communication. By conveying information to consumers, it occupies a certain position in the consumer's mind, thereby attracting consumers to buy.

and promotional positioning is to improve consumer communication efficiency and can quickly seize the mind through an intuitive and concrete content point. This includes several classic positioning methods :

1) The first positioning

is the most important thing in the word "grab". When a brand discovers a mental space, it is determined first and spreads intensively through channels.

, a way to seize the blank market positioning, is commonly used to create a new consumer brand with the "category first" mind. When it comes to inside and outside, you may think of lingerie without size; when it comes to self-heating pot , you may think of self-heating hot pot; when it comes to three and a half meals, you may think of freeze-dried coffee ...

This is the competitiveness brought by the leading positioning.

2) Focus Positioning

"Father of Positioning" Jack Trout has repeatedly emphasized that brands should maintain a narrow focus and strive to establish a unique and unique image cognition in the minds of consumers.

Jiumuwang is a business casual men's clothing brand enterprise that has been established for 32 years. In its spread, it has always focused on the positioning of " men's pants expert".

3) Positioning with the trend

Positioning with the trend is generally a positioning strategy to determine its own market position by comparing with competitive brands, especially the industry's No. 1 ranking.

has many other positions like this:

"China has two major sauce-flavored liquor , one of which is Blue and White Lang ."
"Lingzhi, a high-end car comparable to Mercedes-Benz ."
"Disney is too far away, go to Suzhou Paradise .”

4) reverse positioning

Jack Trout also talked about in his book "Positioning":

"Others are looking for India east, but Columbus looks west. Although he did not find India in the end, he discovered a new continent. In fact, no matter what he discovers when he goes west, Columbus will be the first discoverer, and his historical status is determined by his opposite direction with others. "

This is actually the influence of reverse positioning on the brand. If most participants in the industry are exploring in the same direction, then new entrants will not have the opportunity to stand out.

, such as Nongfu Spring . In 1999, in front of the predecessor of Wahaha , LeBaish , Yibao , and pure water faucets such as Shanghai Zhengguang, how can Nongfu Spring stand out?

"Nongfu Spring stops producing pure water and puts all into production of natural water. Experiments have proved that pure water is not beneficial to health. ”

In 2007, Nongfu Spring was involved in mineral water. At that time, the leader in this field was Master Kong, and its annual sales had reached billions of yuan. What should I do with

? Nongfu Spring has made the acidity and alkalinity of water a topic of discussion among the people, and carried out drinking water pH test activities nationwide to promote water with weak alkalinity in PH value is good for health.