sOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY AND BRANDING; A SIMPLE WAY TO REMEMBER POSITIONING

Social Strategy and Branding: A Simple Way to Remember Positioning



In New Media, because there are so many products, positioning is critical. With so many products in the market place, a consumer must clearly have your brand in the consumer’s mind when the consumer makes their purchasing decisions.

Things have changed in the market place. Marketing has evolved from a push situation in which products are pushed on a consumer by Old Media advertising, in which a consumer has to buy the product offered. Today, product selection is a pull decision. There are so many products, and so much information about these products, consumers simply pull the products that they desire.

Branding is critical. Much of the branding is created through user generated content. Consumers, themselves, take over the brand, through the use of posts, video, tests, and blogs. McKinsey has come up with a theory of purchasing called the Consumer Buying Decision. This theory tells us, simply, that a purchase is the end result of a long history of different touch points. Because of social media, a consumer engages with a brand over many and varied experiences. This theory also tells us that a consumer begins his journey with 4 or 5 brands in mind. A consumer sometimes does change their mind over the history of the Journey, but overwhelming, the original brands have a high percentage of being the ultimate purchase.

To keep positioning simple, brands are positioned in 6 ways.



• Attribute

• Price

• Use

• Product-User

• Product-class

• Competitor



ATTRIBUTE. One singer sings dance music. Another sings love ballads. A tooth paste isknown as a cavity fighter. A car is positioned as the quality car "…the ultimate driving machine".

PRICE. A department store positions itself as the quality leader by having the highest price. Another store positions itself as having nice, stylish clothes, that are "affordable". They don’t carry the most exclusive brands.

USE. Radio station WEEI in Boston, and all sports talk radio station, positions itself against National Public Radio, an all news station.

Product-User. A sneaker company designed a shoe just to be used for basketball, and signed a top NBA star as its spokesperson to position against the sneaker wakening and running sneakers.

COMPETITOR. You position yourself directly against a competitor. One car company had the top ranking. Its competitor decided to position themselves by service. Their tag line was, "…we’re no. 2, we try harder".

After this is done there is a second step in positioning. A marketer asks a second set of questions:



1. Identify the competitors

2. Understand how the competitors are perceived and evaluated

3. Understand the competitors positioning against you

4. Analyze the customers

5. Decide on how you will position yourself against your competitors. You decide what your strengths are and what your weaknesses are. A singer understood that she couldn’t position herself against her competition, so she positioned herself by making very stylish videos.

6. Monitor the analytics. This is strength of social media platforms. You know who came to your sight. You know how long they stayed. You know if your campaign is working by knowing how many visitors came to your site. A key analytic is how many people wrote comments to you. Another important metric are the number off "likes" and " dislikes"



Dean Hambleton

dnhambleton@gnhambleton@gmail.com