7 Key Insights For Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning

Many of today’s brightest creative entrepreneurs and startups try to be all things to all people, yet the current era of positioning is one of narrow market targeting and segmentation.

Here’s a few interesting bits I picked up in Positioning – 7 Key Insights For Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning:

1. The first rule of positioning is: to win the battle for the mind. You can’t compete head-on against a company that has a strong established position. You can go around, under or over, but never head-to-head.
2. You must start by identifying and understanding direct competition positioning strength. You do this through market research, Gallup or Nielsen style. You may have to pay experts a lot for this comprehensive report, but it’ll be worth every penny.
3. Positioning is not what you do to a product, it’s what you do to the mind of the prospect.
4. The basic approach of positioning is to create something new & different; but to manipulate what’s “already in the prospects mind”.
5. Be very selective, concentrate on the narrowest of targets and practice segmentation. Then simplify your message and select the material that has the best chance to land. From all your brand and product characteristics, distill all of that down into one word that harmonizes with your USP.
6. He who gets into the mind first wins long-term. The first brand into the brain for a particular niche gets twice the marketshare as the Number 2 and twice again as the Number 3 brand.
7. The power of the name is the first point of contact between the message and the prospects mind. Your brand and product name must not be funny, trite or clever. It must not be abstract or fuzzy either. Kodak, Pentax and all the 1950’s Copy/Poetry-era company names would never work today. The name is one of the single-most decisive aspects of your entire company, so it should clearly define, in plain english, what you do and what your product is all about.

Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind is a book written by Al Ries and Jack Trout. This book defined a new approach to communication, and may have defined the new era of marketing called “Positioning”. This is a book is as much about marketing as it is human psychology.