A brand positioning framework is a 4-part framework to help you USE your brand strategy to position your business as the perfect choice for your dream clients.

Not to get ahead of myself. Look at me skipping to the good stuff.

Let me start from the beginning.

As a business, you want the perfect-fit people to find your brand and feel seen and understood. So much so that they are 100% sure you are the right solution for their problem and they convert into dream clients.

The question is… How do you stand out from other options in your industry?

The answer is (drum roll please…) brand positioning!

What Is Brand Positioning?

The simple definition of brand positioning is: How you differentiate yourself from other options in your industry.

You can differentiate yourself in lots of different ways. 

You can be the cheapest option. The fastest option. The most personalized option. The closest geographical option. 

You can also differentiate yourself based on your values, approach, your style, your voice, and your personality. 

Having effective positioning as a brand means that you are clear on how you stand out and you leverage your unique positioning in your sales, communications, marketing, partnerships, and more.

Understanding your brand positioning helps you attract the right clients to your brand, increases brand loyalty, and makes decision-making much easier.

Your brand positioning is mapped out in your brand strategy.

Creating Your Brand Strategy

If you’ve worked with an agency, marketing team, or freelancer like myself to create a big document that goes over alllll the details of your brand, then you likely have (at least some sort of) brand strategy.

This document should include everything about your brand from your target audience to your brand voice to your mission statement to your differentiators.

If you don’t have this document for your brand quite yet, no sweat! 

I have a mini-guide below to get you started, or you can work with me to develop yours in just 2-weeks!

First Step is to Open a Google Doc (or Grab Paper & Pen)

Your brand strategy doesn’t need to be fancy. I still make most of my client’s brand strategies on Google Docs! (Although I do have some stunning formatting…)

The important thing is that your strategy answers these questions so you can easily refer back to it for your copywriting, content, sales communication, and more.

• Why did you start this business? 
• What really matters to you about your business?
• Who do you serve? Where are they? What do they care about? 
• What problems do you solve for them?
• What results do you get for your clients?
• Who are your competitors and who are they targeting?
• How are you different from your competition?
  • Pricing? Area? Values? Services? Something else?
• How do you speak to your clients? What’s your tone of voice?
• What objections do your clients have and how do you overcome them?

Once you’ve answered questions yourself, this is a great time to look outwards and get the opinion of your clients.

Get Insights Directly From Your Clients

Booking 1:1 Zoom calls (or conducting online questionnaires) are great ways to learn from your existing clients. 

Why did they choose you? How are you different from other options in the industry?

Be sure to emphasize honesty in this process! You want to genuinely understand why your customers chose you.

Bonus tip: Have rewards like gift cards or free services that you give to any clients who help you – especially anyone who takes time to do a call or interview in person.

Organize Your Strategy So It’s Easy to Reference

You now have a document packed full of information about your brand! This resource is hugely valuable as you move forward.

I’d recommend formatting this strategy into something easy to reference. 

I set up my client’s brand strategies into sections like ‘Target Audience’ and ‘Brand Foundations’ so they can easily find what they need.

One client said he actually printed out his strategy and carried it with him to all his networking events and store visits. I thought that was pretttyyy cool!

Okay, enough bragging.

My 4-Step Brand Positioning Framework

Once you have your brand strategy, you’re ready to follow my 4-step brand positioning framework that helps you IMPLEMENT your strategy and position your brand to stand out in your industry.

My 4 steps to effective brand positioning go like this:

• Get crystal clear on your brand, your audience, and your competitors
• Share your brand differentiators everywhere
• Use your brand strategy for everything
• Stop consuming + comparing so much once your strategy is in place

Get Crystal Clear

This step involves two things:

1. Getting your brand strategy done or updated
2. Getting you and your team aligned on the strategy

Creating (or refreshing) your brand strategy is the biggest step to getting crystal clear on your brand. Followed by ensuring your team, vendors, and freelance partners understand the strategy document.

Having a Google Doc no one ever looks at isn’t useful when it comes to implementing the information in the strategy!

Take the time to align everyone (team calls are great for this) on the strategy and how it impacts their role, client experience, marketing, and more.

Share Your Differentiators

Once you know how you stand out from other options in your industry (your differentiators), start sharing them EVERYWHERE.

Include your differentiators on your website (homepage, ideally!) and your social media bios. Have them as talking points in your sales calls and in your networking conversations.

Remember, your differentiators are what make you the BEST option for your ideal clients. Talking about them helps the right people identify your brand as the right option to get their desired results.

Use Your Brand Strategy for EVERYTHING

Your brand strategy document should now be the thing you look at ALL the time. 

• Before writing your next quarter’s content strategy
• When you draft your next sales campaign
• Share it with freelancers when you bring them on for design work
• Review it when you hire your next employee

This document is a clear picture of your brand, your mission, your positioning, and your values. Have it open constantly to maintain consistency across your operations, sales, and marketing.

Stop Consuming + Comparing

Once you’ve done all of your research and created your positioning, try to avoid mindlessly consuming your competitors’ content. 

You’ll want to keep an eye on your competition to identify trends or changes in your industry, of course, but overall it’s a good idea to focus on YOUR brand and business most of the time.

Constant comparison can sometimes lead to your brand messaging getting confused or getting tempted to follow trends that you see other folks doing without consulting your strategy.

This framework takes that BIG document full of information and gets it working across all areas of your business — from your website to your social media to your sales calls.

Contact me to build out your own brand strategy to help you stand out in your industry and successfully implement your brand’s unique message across your business!