Branding Strategy Insider helps marketing oriented leaders and professionals like you define and grow brand value. BSI readers know, we regularly answer questions from marketers everywhere. Today we hear from Ezra, a marketer from Manila, Philippines who has this question about brand positioning.
Please help me address this concern about a brand’s positioning consistency issue: How do you maintain a consistent marketing communications approach to both of your primary target market (couples) and secondary target market (cancer patients, pregnant women, with thyroid problems, etc.) when they have different sets of values and profile? Our product is in the oral care category, specifically natural-based toothpaste. Thank you so much for your great insights.
Thanks for your question Ezra, we’re happy to help. This is a fairly common problem in brand positioning. Often, a brand and its products will have a different appeal to different audiences. First, I would craft an overall brand position that speaks to the unique benefits of the brand and its products, an overarching position that could work for most audiences. Then, I would tailor the brand message to the individual audiences as appropriate, emphasizing the benefits that are most relevant to each audience. The messages for each audience need to support or at least fit under the overall brand position. A marketing agency with brand positioning expertise should be able to help you with this. It is very possible to do successfully but here are the most common problems in doing so:
• Defining the overarching brand position so generally that it is trite or meaningless
• Crafting such different messages to each audience that it would not be clear to anyone how the different messages work together in support of the overarching brand position
The trick is to create a hierarchy of benefits and messages that work at an overall brand level but also with individual audiences. So for instance with a natural-based toothpaste, the hierarchy of benefits might look something like this:
Brand (natural-based toothpaste, no artificial chemicals, good for your body, good for the environment)
—–> Couples target market (natural, safe, used by those who care about the environment and themselves)
—–> People with specific medical problems (natural, safe, no complications, no side effects, the choice of people who suffer from …, or recommended by physicians for those who suffer from…)
While I have not been briefed on your particular brand or its products, I hope this illustrates the point that I am trying to make about benefits and messages that support the overall brand position.
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