What is Product Positioning? Definition, Strategies, & Examples

This blog post is written for people who want to learn something new with regard to digital marketing—reading this will not give you information about quantum physics.

Why did I say that? Isn’t it just obvious? Yes, it is obvious. However, I wanted to position my blog post for the people who don’t know anything about product positioning. What is product positioning, you ask? Well, this is! I positioned my blog post to a certain audience.

Now, let us exhaust the topic – with the help of product positioning definition, product positioning examples, and product positioning marketing. Keep on reading!

What is Product Positioning?

Product positioning can be defined as a form of marketing that involves determining a new product’s position in the mind of a target audience. With market research and focus groups, you can determine which audience will respond to your product the best. In order to do so, you have to answer two questions your potential customers may ask you.

First, they want to know how the product you are offering to them is going to solve their problems. The second is why they should get your product instead of your competitor’s product. If they like the answers you give these two questions, they certainly will choose your product.

Why is Product Positioning important?

You see, there are very few products accepted as the ideal solution for everyone. So, trying to target a general audience will highly probably result in failure. That’s why product teams have to find the right audience that will find the product appealing. Also, it's their responsibility to advocate the product in a way that the product catches the audience’s fancy.

However, this doesn't mean that your product can solely have one position. On the contrary, your product can have more than one position directed towards different demographics. But, you should keep in mind that each audience has to find something appealing in your product. Then, you can develop different messages for every audience you are targeting.

4 Examples of Good Product Positioning

Some companies understand the importance of product positioning and targeting a field or an audience that can be considered niche. Although the good product examples that are given are not niche, they are pretty successful regarding product positioning. Then let us see who they are.

1- Dollar Shave Club

The name says it all, right? Dollar Shave Club positions its products to the male audience that does not want to pay too much for grooming. This way, they were able to create a brand that is synonymous with affordability and convenience. These two aspects are quite relatable for the average customer.

Their main competitor is Gillette which is more expensive and has a very manly tone to its branding. Unlike Gillette, Dollar Shave Club has a more casual and playful tone. Even their adverts differ. Gillette uses more masculine and tight-looking actors in its advertisements, whereas, in Dollar Shave Club’s adverts, you can see more casual-looking people you can relate to.

This is how successful Dollar Shave Club’s product positioning is. It is known for being cheaper, more relatable, and more convenient than its competitors.

2- Tesla

The brand of one of your favorite billionaires, Elon Musk, has positioned the products quite successfully. It is a brand that produces high-quality, eco-friendly, and expensive cars. Due to the prices of cars, Tesla leaves prices out of sight and focuses more on being eco-friendly and luxurious.

Also, since the cars are electric, they manage to differentiate themselves from other gas-powered luxurious vehicles and be more comfortable than the standard electric cars. Thanks to these two points, they can position their product way better than an ordinary vehicle company.

Also, Elon Musk made this brand fun. For example, a guy named Joe said that autopilot chimes are too loud and wake up his baby. Tesla then created silent mode and named it “Joe Mode.”

3- Nike

Who does not know our good old friend Nike? The inventor of the waffle shoe has always aimed to build the brand around serious athletes. The products they offer are designed to enhance the performances of the athletes who are wearing them.

As you can see from their commercials, the messaging of Nike revolves around empowerment – that’s why they say Just Do It. The models and the athletes are not smiling and joyful; on the contrary, they are focused and doing physical activities.

With all these combined, you can see that Nike’s brand pays strict attention to positioning their brand for the athletes who want to secure 1^st place – just as the name refers to the Greek Goddess of Victory.

4- Apple

Everyone knows that this fruit is maybe the strongest brand in the world. Apple is accepted to be one of the brands that used product positioning. As all of you know, Apple builds computers that are different from what you have experienced so far. Innovation and beauty are the primary focus of Apple.

Similar to Tesla, Apple has high-priced products, and again similar to Tesla, they focus on the value of their products and customer connections. They point out that if you favor Apple rather than other brands, you are a person of innovation, imagination, and creation. 

These four are the top product positioning examples in the market. They have achieved setting a target audience and meeting their needs. Now, you probably want to know how you can position your product just like them.

8 Common Product Positioning Strategies

Being as successful as Apple might be challenging; however, you can follow their strategies to pave the way to success. If that is what you want, you can benefit from these common product positioning strategies.

1- Quality-based Product Positioning

This is the strategy used by Apple and Tesla. Product positioning based on quality highly involves the quality of the product as the primary selling point – as the name suggests. This strategy can be applied to every type of product; that is why this is a common strategy. Companies generally compare their product’s quality with that of their competitors.

In this type of product positioning, you can hear sentences such as this product is better than the leading competitor. If you hear this type of sentence uttered, you can clearly understand that the brand tries to practice quality-based product positioning.

2- Variety-based Product Positioning

This type of product positioning mainly focuses on the variety the brand offers with its products. This way, the audience will know that they have multiple options. Although it is mainly used for products, variety-based product positioning can also be used for services.

To prove that the company offers a large variety of products, the brand may compare the variety offered by its competitors with the variety its products offer. Similarly, they can describe why each of the aspects, variants, etc., is unique and they are second to none.

3- Performance-based Product Positioning

Performance-based product positioning mainly concerns the product’s performance and how well it accomplishes the task. The beauty of the product and how it looks are of less importance with this kind of positioning.

This positioning is almost exclusive to a physical product. The companies using this product positioning generally do not compare themselves with other companies. However, they put forward that the product has the best performance in the market.

For example, you can remember Tesla’s Cybertruck. Cybertruck was not successful in the looks department; however, that was the thing Elon Musk wanted. Cybertruck is positioned as a product of high performance.

4- Efficiency-based Product Positioning

This type of product positioning strategy mainly revolves around the product making the customer’s life more efficient and easier. You can use efficiency-based product positioning with everything due to a product being advertised as a tool to make your tasks less tedious or to make you more productive.

5- Aesthetic-based Product Positioning

This is the product positioning in which brands focus on how the looks and aesthetic of a product suit the customers’ lives and needs. If you are to position your product with this strategy, you don’t need to compare your product with that of other brands. This product positioning is just about the product at hand and how well it looks.

6- Reliability-based Product Positioning

The customers want to trust the product they are purchasing. That’s why some companies use reliability-based product positioning to promote their products. Trust is a significant factor in this product positioning strategy.

Reliability-based product positioning may involve comparisons with similar products – which is done to say the product at hand is more reliable than others. It also involves explanations of why the product is the most reliable product in the market.

Frequently, you see this type of product positioning in brands with a long history. This is because this strategy relates to their longevity in the market and their loyal customer base.

7- Sustainability-based Product Positioning

This product positioning can be considered niche; however, you see this as commonly as others due to the changing market and product types. Eco-friendly companies utilize sustainability-based product positioning to promote their products as sustainable and reusable. Since the main focus is the benefit of the environment, comparisons mostly include products that are not sustainable.

Tesla is an excellent example of this product positioning. They utilize multiple types of product positioning. However, they are all built upon sustainability-based product positioning.

8- DIY-based Product Positioning

With the advance of the internet, people have seen many do-it-yourself types of content and products. E-commerce made popular DIY-based product positioning. This product positioning persuades customers how easy it is to put together a product. Other components of this type of product positioning focus on customers’ intelligence and skills.

Now, you know how to position your product as the giant of the industry. If you can apply the examples and the strategies that were talked about to your products, you can have the highest profits possible and a loyal customer base. So, good luck! See you!