What is brand positioning?
Let's start by understanding what brand positioning even means.
Brand positioning is how you define your place in the market and the unique value you provide to your customers. While your stellar product and excellent customer service will eventually set you apart, before that comes into play, it’s your story that gets you in the door and makes people pay attention.
Why define your brand positioning?
Positioning is the foundational piece for all internal and external communication. Whether you’re talking to the market at large, potential customers, analysts, VCs, the press, or your current and future employees, understanding and articulating why you exist, how you exist, and who you exist for is essential in today’s highly crowded technology space. It's the compass for deciding where to head next within your target market. It's the blueprint that your future product, sales, and marketing teams will reference when making decisions.
Most founders have typically done some positioning work as they create their first pitch deck, build a product data-sheet, or release the first version of the website. That's because positioning is required for launching a company. As you're thinking about your product, how to sell it, who the target customer is, and your ideal first investor, you're inadvertently doing positioning because you're narrowing down what you are - and what you are not.
What we see less of are founders who have taken the time to explore critical and foundational positioning questions that provide clarity on product direction and differentiation in the market. Questions like:
What is your mission?
What is your product’s unique value?
What are your core values as a company?
What words would you like someone to say about your company in 1 year?
How about in 5 years?
Taking the time to answer these questions in a workshop-style setting with your co-founders and/or trusted advisors is key to building a great brand story from the get-go. This sprint is here to help you do this.
