Vision Management: Part 4 - Competing in your chosen Market Place

Understanding the market place for your products and services and where you fit in, is very important to building your successful growth plan and to developing your marketing strategy. How you then position yourself in your chosen marketplace is critical. Positioning is a powerful tool that allows you to create an image. It refers to ‘how organisations want their consumers to see their product’.

What message about the product or service are you trying to put across?  Ultimately positioning is about how you want consumers to perceive your products and services and what strategies you would adopt to achieve this.

That's why it's so important for Owner/Directors to transform their passion for their products and services into a market position. If you don't define your product or service, a competitor will do it for you. Your position in the market place evolves from the defining characteristics of your product. The primary elements of positioning are:

• Pricing. Is your product a luxury item, somewhere in the middle, or cheap, cheap, cheap.
• Quality. Total quality is a much used and abused phrase. But is your product well produced? What controls are in place to assure consistency? Do you back your quality claim with customer-friendly guarantees, warranties, and return policies?
• Service. Do you offer the added value of customer service and support? Is your product customized and personalized?
• Distribution. How do customers obtain your product? The channel or distribution is part of positioning.
• Packaging. Packaging makes a strong statement. Make sure it's delivering the message you intend.

Positioning is your competitive strategy. What's the one thing you do best? What's unique about your product or service? Identify your strongest strength and use it to position your product.

By using Vision Management,  you will identify how to best position your products and services and to then take advantage of your true market potential. You will understand how your chosen market places operate, the true audience for your products and services, how to compete effectively and how to develop the right marketing strategy to target them. This is a key element in building and delivering your plan for growth. This is a complex but essential element in Vision Management.

Vision Management: Step 5 - Building your Growth Plan - Click here