Market positioning: strategies and examples
Market positioning explained: six classic strategies with examples, how to write your own, and how to read a competitor's position from their homepage and ads.
Market positioning is the place a brand occupies in its customers' minds relative to the alternatives: what it is for, who it is for, and why it is the better choice for them. A market positioning strategy is the deliberate choice of that place.
Positioning is relative by definition. "Fast" means nothing on its own. "Faster than the agency you use now" is a position.
Why market positioning matters
Buyers do not compare every option on every attribute. They file brands into rough slots, such as the cheap one, the premium one, the one for small firms, and choose between the slots. If you do not choose your slot, buyers choose it for you, usually based on price or the first thing they saw.
A clear position also makes every other decision easier. Which features to build, which customers to chase, which channels to use and what the homepage headline says all follow from it.
Six market positioning strategies
The classic list comes from David Aaker and J. Gary Shansby's 1982 Business Horizons article "Positioning your product", and it still covers almost every position you will see.
| Strategy | You position on | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Attribute or benefit | A feature or benefit rivals ignore | Accounting software that files your tax return for you |
| Price and quality | Where you sit on the value scale | Budget, mid-market or premium |
| Use or application | A specific occasion or job | A cleaning product for after renovations |
| Product user | A type of customer | A CRM "for estate agents" |
| Product class | Against a whole category | 7 Up's "Uncola" ads set it against all colas |
| Competitor | Against a named or obvious rival | Avis's "We try harder" turned being number two to Hertz into a reason to choose it |
The 7 Up and Avis campaigns date from the 1960s and are still widely cited, because each claimed a position the leader could not take without contradicting itself. The other examples are hypothetical.
Most strong positions combine two strategies: a user and a benefit ("for agencies, reporting in one click"), or a competitor and a price ("everything they do, for half").
Writing your own positioning
A positioning statement is an internal sentence, not a slogan. One common form:
Filled in, for a hypothetical bookkeeping service: "For restaurant owners who hate month-end, Brand X is the bookkeeping service that closes your books in five days, unlike a general accountant, which takes three weeks." The positioning statement examples page has more.
If you cannot fill in the "unlike" part, you have not found a position yet.
How to read a competitor's market positioning
Competitors publish their positioning constantly. Five places to read it in under an hour.
The homepage headline and title tag. What they say first is what they most want to be known for.
The pricing page. Which plan is highlighted, who each tier is named for, and whether prices are shown at all tell you which customer they want most.
Their ads. Ads are positioning under pressure, because every word costs money. The Meta Ad Library and Google's Ads Transparency Center show what they are running now.
Their reviews. What customers praise is the position they actually hold, which is not always the one they claim. Finding positioning in competitors' reviews walks through it.
Their comparison pages. A "vs" page shows exactly whom they consider the main threat.
Write each rival's position as one sentence in the same form as your own statement. Then plot them on two axes buyers care about, such as price and specialisation, using a positioning map. Empty space on the map is a candidate position, as long as buyers actually want something there.
Common mistakes
Positioning on things buyers do not care about. "Founded in 2009" is a fact, not a position.
Claiming everything. Quality, price, service and speed at once. Buyers believe none of it.
Positioning nobody can check. "The best" is ignored. "Set up in one day" can be tested, and that is why it works.
Changing every quarter. A position takes years to build. Each change resets the clock.
Copying the leader's position. The leader already owns it, and owns it more cheaply than you can.
Market positioning is the broad choice of where you sit in the market. For choosing an open position against specific named rivals, see competitive positioning.
Questions people ask
What is the difference between positioning and branding?
Positioning is the choice of what you want to stand for in the buyer's mind relative to competitors. Branding is how you express it, through name, design, voice and messaging. Good branding on top of a muddled position is still muddled.
How long does it take to change market positioning?
Usually years rather than months, because you are changing what people already believe. Repositioning works best when the product or price changes too, so there is something new to notice.
Can a small business have a market position?
It always has one, chosen or not. Customers will place you somewhere relative to the alternatives, so it is better to decide where than to be filed under "the other one".
How many positioning strategies should a brand use?
One main one. You can support it with others, but a brand that claims cheapest, best quality and most specialist at once is believed on none of them.
See it on your own competitors
Figo checks their ads, pages, rankings and reviews every week, then tells you what to do in plain words. Set up in two minutes.
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