Brand Positioning: What it means and why you need it

POPs are those qualities not unique to your business, but instead shared amongst the competitive set. These qualities are not dominant enough to influence brand choice but rather conditional prerequisites to compete for clients. 

Deviation from expected points of parity will lead to increases in preference for your business. PODs, on the other hand, are those attributes that form strong associations in client's minds in a succinct way via function, imagery or performance. Classification for POD includes desirability, deliverability and differentiation capacity.

A top level example would be: you’re a trade (a plumber, say). An expectation would be that you include plumbing in your title or description, turn up jobs and complete the work. A deviation would be that you have a memorable business name, an interesting brand logo, a digital booking and real time tracking/communication system, high quality work completed and a highly engaged customer service process. 

Forming a positioning statement requires you to define four key elements:

1. Your target market

2. The services/products you provide

3. Your point of difference in service and product delivery

4. How these points of difference benefit your customers

Once the above elements are defined, you are ready to position your company. In the same way, a vision and mission statement act as north stars for your business, a well-crafted positioning statement will prove to be a strong anchor for all your marketing communications and form brand awareness for the right reasons.