That we have the ability to extract lessons from our mistakes does not mean that we have to make a lot of mistakes to learn more; Nothing of that! In this post, we will show you that, by reducing brand positioning errors, we learn much more than by committing them.
Many times we start a branding campaign with all our energy wanting to eat the world, it is normal, after all the internet gives us a practically unlimited amount of audience, with all those people it is very easy to sell. It is there that we make one of the great mistakes of brand positioning.
We see the market as something general and forget that its essence is to carry out a specific transaction between a company that provides a concrete solution and a customer who has an individual problem.
What is brand positioning?
Brand positioning consists of locating the logo, that is, the visual identity of our brand, in the memory of our clients, and emerging just at the time of the purchase decision.
Why is brand positioning so important?
Because being remembered increases sales. When we talk about branding, we are not talking simply about being seen, but about remaining in memory, about creating a memorable fact, event, or experience wrapping our brand so that its mere memory becomes a trigger of emotions and positive sensations.
Mistake # 1: Non-positioning
When someone says “my product is for everyone!” It’s like when we put diesel in a gasoline engine. It will not work!
Running an abstract campaign, simply distributing content or ads without any logic does not give any results. There is a trident in every strategy that protects us from this error:
- set a goal
- define our person
- develop an action plan
They should always be the first three steps: knowing what you want, who you want to impact, and how you will do it. And there are also other very common conceptual tools such as:
- the client’s journey (to detect improvement points);
- sales funnel; (to drive leads);
- Purchase process (to implement the improvements).
If you look at them carefully, they are all tools that, in addition to performing a specific function, transform the general into a who, a where and a when. Do not make this mistake with something as important as your brand, there is no marketing in general.
Mistake # 2: Not trusting marketing
Marketing is a university discipline, which for more than a century has studied in detail the behavior of the purchase/sale links of a company. We know very well that the profitability of your company is not a game or an experiment.
Would you leave something as complex and delicate as introducing your institutional image in the memory of your audience in the hands of an amateur?
That’s why we alert you to this very common mistake that is not taking the power of marketing seriously. Work with professionals to make branding an investment rather than an expense.
Mistake # 3: Not having a healthy bond with money
Continuing with the line of thought from the previous point, another big mistake is to think that marketing has no costs or to have that mentality that confuses expenses with investment. Marketing well done can mean investing 5 to earn 500, if we do branding it is because it works and gives us a very high-profit margin on the investment.
Marketing is a fundamental asset of the company and branding works with perceptions, subjectivities, images, colors, texts, that is: we will need a high-quality team.
Quality, in turn, has two aspects that, although they seem opposite, are actually complementary:
- it demands-resources because it is expensive;
- It gives us resources because that is what our clients pay for.
Therefore it is not a subject under discussion, always work with a budget, clear, fair, and reasonable to finance the quality of your brand positioning.
Mistake # 4: forgetting about people
Buyer Persona, Branding Persona, personalize, and interpersonal intelligence. All of these are concepts aimed at humanizing. With what objectives? Be more assertive when making strategic decisions to position our brand, generate empathy, add value to our offer, interpret and anticipate the client’s wishes.
The usefulness of these concepts is to segment automatically and they are very useful for a brand positioning strategy:
- buyer personas: who buys from us;
- brand persona: how our customers see us;
- personalization: adding individual value;
- interpersonal intelligence: understand and anticipate your audience.
It is not just about remaining in the memory, but about remaining in the memory of someone in particular, in an active and differentiated way, influencing when making the purchase decision.
Mistake # 5: Separate branding from product/service
When the idea is to position our brand we can make definition errors and our positioning can be:
- insufficient and the brand is not perceived
- excessive and generate a lot of wear and tear and even rejection
- confusing and leading us to wrong conclusions
- doubtful and give us a bad image of the brand.
Do you know why this is? Because we often confuse the brand with the product. That is why it is essential to become aware that brand and product are not the same and that each of them has its own marketing logic.
Mistake # 6: Thinking that selling increases sales
Let’s put it this way, a positive brand perception demands generating positive value and many times selling out of place or to the wrong person can cause a feeling of invasion. That is why it is essential to understand that positioning is not selling.
Branding is a two-step move, very different from other more direct and invasive types of marketing, if we seek to remain in memory it is because we are betting on a lasting relationship, therefore the ideal is to appear only when the client needs us.
Conclusion
We have reached the end of another article in which we wanted to show you the most common mistakes made by people who have a certain knowledge of marketing. Just because you don’t make beginner mistakes doesn’t mean you’re safe from making mistakes.
The more we advance as marketers, the more we must study because our brand positioning errors can cost more; after all, a beginner has nothing to lose, and for us, it is a matter of survival. We hope you have learned something new in this post and we wish you the best of luck with your campaign.
