The Most Important Component of Your Marketing Plan

Your brand is molded by everyone who interacts with it: customers, employees, vendors, clients and every other stakeholder. Yet there is one piece of your brand that is yours alone, and when you use it to direct your marketing strategy, you have the opportunity to position it in the minds of every stakeholder — even though most will never see it. It is called your brand positioning statement and it is the most important component of your marketing plan.

At Prosper for Purpose, we believe that the brand positioning statement is the most important component of a marketing plan. It creates the foundation and the focus for the development of the plan: from goals and strategy down to tactics.

So what is this powerful thing called a brand positioning statement? It is a written declaration of your brand’s unique value. It defines why a consumer should choose your product or service over your competitors. Unlike a tagline, which is consumer facing, the brand positioning statement is typically for internal use only, but reinterpreted into taglines and other consumer-facing marketing. Here’s one example:

To adults suffering from a variety of cold and/or flu symptoms, NyQuil is the original soothing night-time cold medicine that effectively relieves symptoms so you can sleep through the night.

While a positioning statement can appear basic, careful thought and attention should be given to the process. The words matter, as when used properly, they form the basis for all the marketing to come.

A positioning statement includes:

• Your Target Market
• Definition of the Market
• Brand Promise (emotional or rational benefit)
• The Reason to Believe the Brand Promise

Ready to think about your brand? Here’s a brand positioning template:

For [insert Target Market], the [insert Brand] is the [insert Point of Differentiation] among all [insert Frame of Reference] because [insert Reason to Believe].