How a Positioning Statement Guides Brand Decisions (2024) – Shopify

A good positioning statement is as a compass for all your marketing efforts. It solidifies your brand position and guides all aspects of your business communication in the right direction. It determines which influencers you partner with on TikTok and Instagram. It guides how your customer service representatives sign off on tickets. It sets the tone and messaging of your weekly email newsletter. Overall, a successful brand positioning statement helps you establish consistency across distinct customer touchpoints, so your brand becomes instantly recognizable. 

What is a positioning statement?

A brand positioning statement is a focused description that defines your company’s unique value in the market. It identifies your target audience, articulates the benefits you provide, and explains why your product or service is distinct among competitors. 

From your logo and packaging to your social media presence, a positioning statement informs all customer touchpoints and ensures a consistent brand message. It influences how customers perceive your brand and how your organization’s internal teams can help solidify that perception for future product messaging. 

Key elements of a positioning statement

There’s no single positioning statement template to follow. Still, positioning statements are typically short, concise, and specific. Let’s illustrate this through looking at what a hypothetical footwear brand might include in its statement:

• Target market. This defines the specific group of people who most benefit from your brand. You might target fashion-forward professionals aged 30 to 45 who prioritize quality and craftsmanship in their wardrobe choices.

• Core value offering. This articulates the primary benefit your brand provides to your customers. Your offering could focus on meticulously crafted shoes that blend timeless elegance with modern comfort, ensuring wearers feel confident in the boardroom or during a night out.

• Unique selling proposition. This highlights what makes your brand different from competitors. You might emphasize a century-old Italian craftsmanship technique combined with ethically sourced tanned leather.

• Brand personality traits. This describes the human characteristics associated with your brand, shaping how it communicates. Your identity could embody sophistication, innovation, and attention to detail, reflected in minimalist design.

• Market niche definition. This identifies the specific market segment your brand occupies. For instance, you could position in the luxury footwear market, bridging the gap between off-the-rack and bespoke options.

Tips for writing a positioning statement

Your brand’s positioning statement should be concise, typically just a few sentences long. However, these sentences need to pack a powerful punch, so crafting each element should be intentional. Here are some tips on how to approach the process:

Research your competitors

Building a positioning statement is an opportunity to differentiate your brand from the rest. That process begins with knowing your competitors—their offerings, their value propositions, and their own product positioning. Armed with this knowledge, you can craft your own statement to guide your own marketing and positioning in a differentiated direction.

Here’s how a brand like Glossier has managed to stand out. Its positioning statement reads as follows: “At Glossier, we make products inspired by real life, embracing the ethos of Skin First. Makeup Second. We believe beauty is about having fun, celebrating freedom, and being present. No matter where you are in your beauty journey, you look good.”

This philosophy permeates every aspect of the brand, from its website design to the influencers it partners with. Its product imagery showcases natural, minimally edited looks, and its social media marketing strategy emphasizes individual expression rather than conformity to beauty standards, all in alignment with this foundational statement.

Brainstorm with your team

Crafting a positioning statement with diverse perspectives across your organization—from marketing and product development to customer service and sales—ensures it accurately represents your brand’s multifaceted identity. Be intentional about brainstorming, bringing in words, phrases, colors, and images that represent your ethos. This holistic approach can help you capture the essence of your brand.

Use word clouds to identify specific terms that define your brand. Visual elements like product images and color palettes are also important, as they influence brand perception. For example, if you’re a fashionable athletic wear brand, consider whether words like “competitive,” “hard,” “warrior,” and “top-performing sports apparel” resonate more than “gentle,” “nurturing,” “balance,” and “gradual improvement.”

Talk to your customers 

Your customers’ perceptions of your brand are invaluable in shaping an effective positioning statement. Their feedback can serve as a starting point, revealing how your brand is currently perceived in the market. 

Conduct surveys or interviews and ask customers to define your brand. If customer responses are bland or unclear, you’ve got some work to do to clarify your brand’s identity. When responses are distinct and align with your vision, it’s time to double down on those elements. However, if what you’re hearing isn’t what you hoped for, use this insight to craft a positioning statement that will help shift those perceptions.

Here are a few questions you might ask your customers to help determine your positioning:

• What problem does our product solve for you?

• How would you describe our brand to a friend?

• What makes us different from similar brands you’ve tried?

• If our brand were a person, how would you describe its personality?

Zero in on your unique attributes 

Uniqueness is what sets you apart in a crowded market, gives customers a reason to choose you, and forms the foundation of your brand identity. Your own positioning statement should highlight what makes you special—it’s not just about being different, but being meaningfully different in a way that matters to your customers. 

Ashwin Krishnaswamy is a DTC expert, entrepreneur, and TikTok personality. He’s the founder of Oklahoma Smokes, a nicotine-free and tobacco-free cigarette company, as well as Forge, a branding agency based in New York. In an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast, Ashwin highlights the importance of unique positioning in brand strategy. 

“People think of branding and brand identity as aesthetics. They’ll say, ‘Hey, I want a candle brand and I want it to feel minimalist, luxe, and premium,’” he says. “Take time and understand that landscape. What is the landscape of all of these DTC candle brands? And how are we going to differentiate relative to them? And is there a unique twist? Because there has to be something inherently unique.”

Incorporate your brand values

Brand values are the core principles that guide your company’s actions and shape its culture. For example, a brand might value sustainability and prioritize eco-friendly practices, or it might value innovation and constantly push for cutting-edge solutions. Consumers increasingly seek to support brands whose values align with their own, making it beneficial to incorporate these values into your position statement for better customer connection, loyalty, and differentiation.

Everlane, a direct-to-consumer fashion retailer known for its commitment to ethical manufacturing and transparency, uses this approach with its positioning statement: “We believe we can all make a difference. Our way: Exceptional quality. Ethical factories. Radical Transparency.” 

This statement communicates Everlane’s brand values and reflects how the company shows up in the world. For instance, Everlane’s commitment to transparency is evident in its unique approach to Black Friday sales. Instead of offering discounts, it donates profits to worthy causes. Practices like these directly reflect the values stated in their positioning statement, demonstrating how brand values can shape business operations and customer perceptions.

Consider your brand vision

A brand vision statement is your company’s aspirational view of the future it aims to create, distinct from its mission statement (what you do daily) or values (guiding principles). For instance, as a kitchen appliance company, your vision might be to simplify home cooking and make it accessible to everyone, regardless of skill level or budget.

Whatever your vision, bring it to the forefront and weave it into your positioning statement, showing how your products or services are stepping stones toward that larger goal.

Keep it short and simple 

Keep your statement short, simple, and easy to remember. This isn’t a 50-slide presentation or a five-page manifesto. Instead, aim to keep it to half a page at most. It can be helpful to create two positioning statements—a longer one for internal use and an externally facing one that’s just a few sentences.

Here’s an external one by Aesop, a luxury skin care and hair care brand: “We offer skin, hair and body care formulations created with meticulous attention to detail, and with efficacy and sensory pleasure in mind.” 

This statement perfectly encapsulates Aesop’s focus on quality, detail, and sensory experience. You can see this play out in their minimalist brown bottle packaging, their stores that double as art installations, and their products that smell as good as they feel on your skin.

Example of a positioning statement

Let’s think about a personal electronics brand that creates music systems for homes and envisions bringing friends and family together through shared musical experiences. Its positioning statement might read something like this: 

“At Soundtrack, we craft intuitive, high-fidelity sound systems that turn your home into a concert hall for life’s most precious moments. We believe music has the power to strengthen bonds, ignite emotions, and compose the backdrop for a more harmonious world. Our innovative audio solutions don’t just deliver pristine sound; they’re the conductors of shared experiences, family traditions, and the rhythm of daily life.”

This positioning statement goes beyond just describing the product features. It articulates a compelling brand promise and vision that can drive the business forward. It also connects the functional benefits of high-quality sound systems with the emotional and social benefits of bringing people together.