Global Brand Positioning on Social Media and Why It Works
Clarke Ricks School of Business,
Liberty University
BUSI 690: Policy and Strategy in Global Competition
Dr. Hicks
June 30, 2022
Global Brand Positioning Strategy for the Professional Services Industry
Way back in 1969, a very perceptive marketer named Jack Trout introduced the concept of
brand positioning to the world. He was the first to put a word to a very powerful marketing
effect. A few years later, he and Al Ries wrote the seminal book, Positioning: The Battle for Your
Mind, and the rest is history.
Now, more than half a century later, the concept of positioning is just as relevant to
businesses — and probably more so. If anything, today is professional services marketplace is
much larger and more crowded. Buyers have a bewildering array of firms to choose from, and
with the rise of the Internet, local firms are contending with companies across the nation, if not
the world.
That’s where brand positioning comes in. It elegantly explains how people see the
marketplace and prescribes a way firms can carve out a place in the minds of their buyers.
Brand Positioning Defined
At its simplest, brand positioning is the process of setting your business apart from your
competitors in a way that builds preference for you among your target audience. Its goal is to
associate your firm with an idea or category in the minds of people who might buy your
services.
Let’s consider a couple of examples.
What do you think of when you read the words, “soft drink” or “pop”? Did Coke or Pepsi
come to mind? These two products are positioned to dominate the soft drink category.
Now let’s try a service. What company does “overnight shipping” make you think of? Even
though other companies offer overnight delivery, FedEx owns that category — it has built its
entire identity and operations around doing it better than anyone else.
In theory, any professional services firm can build a strong association between their brand
and an idea. But to be successful, your positioning must be 1) different (it’s tough to take over a
leadership position already held by another business — remember, Avis has been #2 since
1953.); and 2) visible (if nobody has heard of your firm, your positioning can’t take root).
Typically, your brand positioning is articulated in your brand positioning statement. But I’ll
have a lot more to say about that a bit later.
Why Brand Positioning Is Important
When you have a well-defined brand position, your firm has many advantages. Positioning
can provide a conceptual template for your brand, your marketing messages, the services you
offer and even the way you structure your pricing.
Here are a few of the key benefits of brand positioning:
1. It focuses you on a specific target market. When you provide a limited set of services to
a limited audience, your marketing becomes more powerful and effective. You are perceived as
a high-value expert.
2. It clarifies how you are different from competitors. You’ll finally know exactly what sets
you apart and be able to talk about your firm in a way that gets prospects excited.
3. It shows how to win new clients. Positioning arms your business development team
with critical arguments they can use in the nurturing and closing processes.
4. It drives creative decisions. When you understand the core message you need to
communicate to prospects, you can make informed decisions throughout the creative process.
Your positioning becomes the DNA of your visual brand.
5. It drives service development and pricing decisions. Knowing how you compare to your
competitors helps you decide what new services to offer, and when. Are you positioned as a
source of innovative services? A low-cost provider? A specialist or a generalist? The answers to
these questions can affect what services you offer and how to price them.
5 Types of Brand Positioning Strategy
Positioning strategies can take many forms, but not all are appropriate for professional
services firms. Below are five strategies that are most relevant to positioning a firm like yours:
1. Cost-driven positioning. “We offer everything those other firms do, but we cost less.”
This is a very challenging strategy unless you have an inherent cost advantage. Technology can
be your best friend if you are using it more effectively than your competitors or your worst
enemy if you are behind others in a cost-driven strategy.
2. Niche service specialization. In this strategy, you focus on offering a service that is not
widely available through competitors. You offer specialized expertise that, presumably, a
generalist would not have. This approach can work well unless the service begins to generate
strong demand and new competitors emerge to dilute your “specialness.”
3. Industry specialization. This is a popular and often effective way to position a
professional services firm. It is another form of specialized expertise, and it allows you to tightly
focus your marketing and evolve your services as your market changes. The implication of
industry specialization is that your firm has deep experience working with similar businesses.
This approach comes with risks, however. If your industry experiences an economic decline,
your fortunes may follow. It is also easy for new competitors to enter the fray and disrupt your
positioning.
4. Role-focused specialization. “We help CEOs succeed” is an example of role-focused
positioning — targeting a particular function in the organization. Instead of specializing in a
particular industry or service, you target a cohort of people. These buyers will perceive you as
more tuned in to their needs and expectations that you offer specific knowledge or expertise
that will make their job easier.
5. Quality of service positioning. This is one of the most common strategies used by
professional services firms, and (with rare exceptions) it is one of the least effective. “Nobody’s
more committed to quality,” “we deliver the best service” and similar messages are so
ubiquitous in the marketplace that they utterly fail to impress buyers. Of course, buyers do
want quality and customer service — but these traits are table stakes and they are
rarely criteria used to select a firm.
Brand Positioning Examples
What does a well-positioned firm look like? Below we include a few examples of how some
of our own clients have positioned themselves in the marketplace. These examples represent
the purest distillation of their brand positioning—simple ideas that anyone in the marketplace
can understand but which are difficult for competitors to copy.
“The nation’s leading accounting and research firm for nonprofits and associations.”
Why it works: Vault’s unusual combination of accounting and research services, in
conjunction with their industry focus, allows them to claim leadership status.
“The nation’s leading Medicaid consultancy to health care providers, payors and state
governments.”
Why it works: They do just one thing: Medicaid consulting. And they have built a market
leadership position around that specialization.
“We focus on just one thing: equipping today’s accounting professionals with all the skills,
knowledge and leadership training they need to thrive and grow.”
Why it works: They focus on a powerful need in the CPA industry: keeping accounting
professionals fully trained and equipped to build their business.
What Is a Brand Positioning Statement?
A brand positioning statement is a succinct, easy-to-understand paragraph that describes
your firm’s positioning in the marketplace. It should address three questions: 1) What do you
do? 2) Who do you serve? 3) How are you different from similar firms in the marketplace? It
may also include other key reasons clients prefer your firm over others. A brand positioning
statement is primarily an internal document that a firm’s marketing and business development
teams can use to craft differentiated marketing language—though some of its language may be
used verbatim in public-facing messaging. In Step 4 below, we explain how to write your own
positioning statement.
