Brand Positioning: Remember This

Posted by Craig on June 20th, 2008 filed in Strategy

Source: Jack Trout, Branding Strategy Insider

What seven concepts are critical to positioning?

1. Perception (their’s, not your’s)
2. Differentiation
3. Competition
4. Specialization
5. Simplicity
6. Leadership
7. Reality

To sell concepts, products and services, you have to understand how the mind works:

1. The mind is a limited container.
2. The mind creates “product ladders” for each category (cars, toothpaste, accounting services, hamburgers, etc.) There is always a top rung and a bottom rung in each category.
3. The mind can only remember seven items in a high interest category. Most people remember only two or three items in a category.
4. On the product ladder, Positions One and Position Two typically account for more than 60 per cent of the sales in that category. In other words, Positions Three, Four and Subsequent are not profitable.
5. The mind hates complexity. To the mind, complexity equals confusion. People don’t have time to figure out confusion.
6. The best way to enter the mind is to OVER-SIMPLIFY the message.
7. The most powerful positioning is to reduce your message to one simple and easily understood word.
8. Minds are insecure. Most people buy what others buy: this is the “herd mentality.”
9. Minds don’t change—easily.