Marketing Theory: Positioning Your Online Business

At present, the secret about making an online or home-based business successful is no longer as well kept as it was years back. If you are one of those people who are minimally informed about the different effective business formulas, then you better catch up now in order to enjoy the numerous benefits that others are already experiencing by going online.

There are different ways for an online business to be unique – from small pricing, packaging, and service differences to noticeable differences in features and benefits with other competitors. But whatever the case may be, you business’ sense of uniqueness has to be tested in relation to the other products and services that your prospect buyers are currently using (such as the things that your business wishes to replace with its own offers and packages). Differences between products are not really that much of a deal unless they are significant enough to the customer such that in influences his or her purchasing decision.

There are some cases when there might be only little or no difference at all between your products and services and that of your competitors. And if there are differences, they may be very difficult to pinpoint as to exactly what (think Coke and Pepsi). In that case, it is up to you to create the defining differences.

Differentiation is the process of collecting the differences in features and benefits of your products versus the products of your competitors. The key here is to identify how important these differences are in the eyes of the buyer. For a positioning strategy to be greatly successful there should be a clear communication of the important differences between products.

Positioning is the process of adding a brand value to that collection of differences in the minds of your prospect customers. In simpler terms, you must be able to solve the problem of how to communicate that meaningful difference about your business idea to the people who are most interested in buying it.

Creating and communicating to your target buyer the meaningful differences in your product and service in contrast to that of your competitors is influenced by the packaging, pricing, features and benefits, product design, colors, advertising and promotion mediums, public relation events, and even the spokespersons that you invite. All these things should work together in order to promote a consistent image of your product or service in the market. You should be able to position yourself in such a way that your prospect clients and customers will have no room to consider your competitors and their products and services.

Proper positioning of your product and services can be considered as solving the different marketing problems brought about by the Four Ps of Marketing, namely:

• Product
• Price
• Promotion or Advertising
• Place (or distribution)
as well as the Four Cs, which are:
• Company Definition
• Competitor’s Identification
• Consumer Target Definition
• Channels (of distribution)

To summarize everything, you can say that positioning is what you do to the mind of your prospect.