For B2B companies, the right product positioning is essential to better market products and bring them to the target group.
This article shows exactly what product positioning is and how a well-thought-out positioning strategy not only helps to stand out from the competition but also specifically addresses the needs and expectations of business customers. Which factors make a positioning successful and how can it support a company's business goals?
What Is Product Positioning?
Product positioning is the strategic process by which a company places its product or service within a specific market in order to stand out from competitors and address the desired target group. Positioning is particularly critical in a B2B context, as decision-making processes are often more complex and purchase cycles are longer than in the B2C sector.
Positioning a product in the B2B sector requires an in-depth analysis of the specific needs, challenges, and priorities of business customers. Companies must clearly define what unique value their product or service offers in order to effectively differentiate themselves from other offerings. This can be achieved through various factors, including innovative technology, superior services, industry expertise, or cost efficiency.
Communication is an essential aspect of product positioning. It is about developing a message that conveys why the product is the ideal solution to the specific problems of target customers. This requires not only a clear understanding of the product features but also of the associated benefits and the resulting added value.
In summary, product positioning in the B2B sector is a decisive factor for market success. It helps companies assert themselves in a competitive environment, attract the right customers, and ultimately increase their market shares and sales.
What Makes for a Good Core Message?
In many cases, a good core message determines whether someone feels addressed and continues to engage with your company or offer — or goes to the competition. The philosophy behind a good message is that it should convey the value of your brand in terms of what you do for your customers, not what you sell. Put more simply: It shows how your product can help your target group solve a specific problem.
A good core message for successful product positioning
- Set yourself apart from the competition
- is easy to understand
- Is relevant to your Buyer Personas so that they can identify with it
- and it is above all to the point.
So that you can formulate your core message, you must first know what makes your company or product unique. What is your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)?
The answers to the following questions represent only part of the information that your potential customers should have about you:
- What makes your product special?
- Does it have a specific emotional or factual benefit for the buyer?
- What need does it satisfy?
- How do your services help the target group?
- What is your goal as a company?
- What are the advantages of your product compared to the competing product?
The Understandable Product Positioning
Finding a positioning for a product is also one of the most important corporate tasks in B2B. What often seems simple in the B2C sector poses major challenges for many a B2B company due to complex and often very technical products. And this is exactly how product positioning works: by listing the product features. It's about showing your buyer persona what advantage your product gives them.
People like to generously ignore the fact that their own product or service could be poorly positioned. Or you simply don't recognize it. You can recognize poor product positioning by the following signs:
- Your sales department has to explain to customers for a long time what it's all about — often that is Product too technical and too complex.
- You have a bad Retention rate or a high Churn Rate.
- Although you have a lot of interested leads in the end, they don't buy.
When Is Positioning Good?
If you belong to the target group and are confronted with a well-positioned product, you won't forget it anytime soon. Excellent examples of this can still be found almost exclusively in the B2C market. Just think about the positioning of each new iPhone: The message is clear here — technically at the forefront, visually a league of its own, and all without selling data. There is usually just as little talk of the chip in the iPhone as about other technical details.
Very important: The iPhone is not an ordinary smartphone and is not positioned as such, which is strategically clever, as it can do less than other smartphones. The fact that we do not complain about this is primarily due to the product positioning of the device itself, which has its very own qualities.
Examples of strategic positioning from the B2C sector can be transferred to the B2B market. Here, too, the central goal is to provide the target group with powerful arguments for your product that they can do something with.
So a good positioning is as follows:
- It is tailored to the knowledge and needs of the target group.
- It creates no pressure to justify missing functions.
- It communicates the benefits.
- It describes what the product is about and what makes it unique.
Three Steps for Perfect Product Positioning
Such a strategic positioning can be achieved in three easy steps.
Step 1: What Does Your Product Do Better than the Competition?
Not only do you need to know your target group well, but also your product. It's also worth creating a profile here. In order to move from product to positioning, you need to know what features it offers and what the benefits are. Ask yourself what your customers would do if your solution didn't exist. What are the unique features of your product?
It is also important to know the competition well:
- What can it do?
- What can't your product do that the competing product can?
- What can your product do better?
The quality of a product is only as good as perceived by customers. You cannot objectively judge the product quality yourself. Your customers, on the other hand, can do this because they compare the products with those of competitors.
In this step, you sort all the benefits of your offer according to various benefits. But the result for the customer is also important. Your opinion about your strengths is irrelevant without evidence. The formulation of benefits goes one step further: It places the benefits in the context of a goal that the customer wants to achieve.
Step 2: Find a Market Reference Framework
If you choose your category wisely, all assumptions work for you. You don't have to list every feature, because it's assumed that all products in the category have the basic features of the category. Conversely, this means that a poor choice of category can be a disadvantage for you. If the market category we choose triggers assumptions that don't apply to our product, we'll need to dedicate much of our marketing and sales efforts to combat those assumptions.
HubSpot uses the marketing automation market reference framework. Implicitly, it is assumed that features related to managing contacts and email marketing are included. These functions do not have to be mentioned explicitly at the first point of contact, such as on the start page, but are assumed by readers as soon as they read marketing automation software.
Step 3: Which Trends Can You Use?
Trends that have a tangible connection to the product often help to communicate the benefits. By mentioning the trending keyword, a massive frame of meaning is created that conveys some advantages to those addressed without you having to go far. For example, the term “Industry 4.0” implies that it is about the digitization of industrial production. This allows buyers to better understand how a product relates to the company's overall priorities.
However, such trend positioning should be done carefully and not result in empty phrases that only create confusion in the end. So make sure that you don't string together such trending terms indiscriminately because the terms are trending right now. There must always be a connection to your company.
Conclusion
Formulating a core message is important because it shows your customers, How your product can help them solve a specific problem. To create the right product positioning for you, you should The following three steps Don't ignore:
- Know your product so you know what sets you apart from your competition.
- Choose the right category for your product as a market reference framework.
- Trends can help you with product positioning if there is a connection to your company.
If you follow these three steps, you're well on your way to positioning your product correctly. As a result, your services can stand out from the competition and you can also sustainably increase sales figures in the B2B sector. Proper product positioning is therefore not only essential for marketing but also essential for higher sales and positive business development.
