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Two wellness brands face off in the pursuit of their same prospective wellness-seeking core customer. One is a much smaller brand faced with a significant marketing budget deficit versus its dramatically larger rival. But supported by a more robust brand positioning statement, smaller brand connects in a more emotive and compelling manner.

Never underestimate the power of a perfectly positioned brand!

What Is Brand Positioning

A brand is a promise of value to a particular audience. Brand positioning frames how to bring this promise to life and ensures the promise is credible and honest. A properly developed brand position strategy helps brands stake out their place and their audience in the growing wellness economy.

A brand positioning statement explains what your brand does, who you target, and the benefits of your brand, in a short, concise statement. The statement is generally an internal document, used as a guide to bring your brand to life across the whole brand experience.

As a vast number of brands are defining a new era of “everything wellness” for the modern consumer, and as the health and wellness category continues to explode into a multi trillion-dollar industry – brand positioning strategy becomes even more vital to success. To win, every brand will need to get clear on how they can become a part of this new health-focused ecosystem.

Developing Brand Positioning Strategy

There are important steps you need to take to build a brand positioning statement that’s genuine to your company, compelling to your consumers and distinguishing from competitors. Since all of your brand building efforts key off of your brand positioning, it’s critical that you don’t shortcut the process. These steps include:

Fit With Larger Brand Strategy Framework

Your brand positioning is one element of a more comprehensive brand strategy framework. Each individual component of this “brand playbook” informs how you define, develop, activate and manage your brand (though brand positioning stands at the heart of marketing strategy). And the good news is that developing this playbook is within reach of any size health and wellness company.

These other brand strategy components include:

• brand purpose: the larger impact your company wants to have in the world (its “Why”) beyond making a profit; which increasingly includes the bigger role that brands wish to play in society today
• brand story: the single narrative that reflects the emotional heart of your brand and motivates employees, defines culture, creates emotional ties with customers
• brand elevator pitch: the crisp statement of what you do, who you serve, and what distinguishes you from competition in an elevator ride period of time
• brand values: the characteristics that drive organizational behavior in the process of conducting business
• brand value proposition: the functional, emotional and life-changing outcomes of your company’s offerings
• brand personality: the unique set of human qualities that define your brand’s voice, design and copy style
• brand messaging framework: the set of messages that allow you to tell your brand story consistently and succinctly across audiences and channels

Fit With Core Consumer Story

The only thing that matters to your prospective consumers is how your brand can uniquely better their lives. But you can’t do this until you know where they’re coming from. Understanding their beliefs, behaviors, pain points and aspirations. Understanding the category segment in which they place your brand and your place in it.

These are the insights that will help you find something in the target’s like worth solving for and can ultimately give you a competitive edge.

Fit With Company Business & Brand

Your positioning statement needs to be grounded and able to be delivered across all of your actions and interactions. So you need to capture all of the elements that define and distinguish your business.

Cycle through your value propositions, channels, customer relationships and revenue streams. Search for interesting brand assets that might be hidden in plain sight. Capture everything you can, as one of these elements will be the key to your positioning.

Distinctive Vs. Competition

By its very nature, positioning is a relative term. It’s about where your brand sits in relation to competition. So your starting point is defining exactly whom you compete with today – being sure not to overlook new and non-traditional competitors.

From there, you need to understand what these competitors do and say and how they present themselves through their brand voice. Look for thematic cliches being played out amongst them, and where your brand might be able to own a particular niche.

Putting It All Together

Positioning is an act of sacrifice, not inclusion. So don’t try to cram multiple ideas into your position. There may be a lot to say, but you can only say one thing first.

It doesn’t need to communicate every reason there is to buy your product or use your service. It just needs to distinguish you from the herd and invite further exploration of your brand.

Once you have a position, all of your brand experiences and marketing efforts should orbit around it. It is the core of your brand’s competitive strategy.  Nurtured every day, it provides a significant competitive advantage to your brand.

Writing your brand positioning statement

Regardless of specific format, your brand positioning statement should be single-minded and simple. And it should contain four elements.

1. The category in which the brand operates

The category/industry/vertical your brand operates; and this isn’t always as obvious as it sounds. Defining the exact space in which you operate helps focus your direction and helps the people who matter to your success understand where you fit.

2. The target audience

Narrowing as much as possible to your main target group gives a clear focus to your messaging and your brand experience. It will also help later when developing marketing and media plans.

3. The benefits to the customer

The actual functional and emotional benefit (notice these are singular) the customer will derive from being a customer of your brand.

4. The reason why the brand will deliver on this promise

Whatever the reason, there has to be something backing up your claim.

The Power of Brand Positioning

A genuine, compelling and distinguishing brand positioning can have a great impact on the success of your business. It can help drive growth and build a business that’s resilient enough to endure shifts in the overlapping and converging segments that are being reimagined in the health and wellness market. Key is active management of your brand positioning to ensure your brand’s relevancy amidst the vast number of brands vying for the modern health and wellness consumer.

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Since 1999, New Jersey marketing agency Trajectory has helped health and wellness brands rise above the noise to move businesses and customers forward. Reach out for a no-obligation consultation.