Positioning is a complex process. It is the foundation of any brand-building activity. It requires mastery of your product understanding, target audience, market, market funnel, sales organization, project management, internal and external influences, and more.
It can be a daunting task to embark on, but the good news is that there are numerous resources that businesses can consult to make the strategy development process clearer. With the right resources, you can develop a plan to establish your market positioning and access all the tools you need.
In this post, we will share some resources that will help you in understanding positioning. Let us get right into the details!
- Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind
Authored by Jack Trout & AI Ries, this book is one of the best books that will help any brand develop a market positioning. The resource walks you through legendary brands and various case studies that have successfully created brand positioning. You will also find recommendations that you can easily apply to your business.
- Playing to Win: How Strategy Works
This book resource is authored by A.G. Lafley & Roger L. Martin. It is a must-read for anyone looking to build a successful brand and positioning. It offers a step-by-step guide on how to define and validate strategic business choices.
- Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive & Others Die
Written by Chip and Dan Heath, this book is an excellent resource in helping businesses craft positioning and marketing messaging that are memorable, impacting, and designed to make your brand virally adopted.
- Ogilvy on Advertising
Authored by David Ogilvy, this book is one of the best resources you can use to build your brand positioning and drive it successfully. Except your business is at the peak of its existence, you should add this resource to your business library.
- Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products
This is a powerful resource written by Nir Eyal. The book uses renowned brands, such as Pinterest, Twitter, and iPhone, to explore how successful brands have used positioning to get their customers stuck on their products and services. Your business can learn a couple of things about brand and market positioning from this resource.
- Crossing The Chasm: Marketing & Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers
This book details the different considerations for buyers’ segments, including laggards, late majority, early majority, early adopters, and innovators, and how brand positioning works for these other groups. Geoffrey A. Moore wrote the book.
- Scientific Advertising
If you read any brand marketing and positioning book, this book should be on the top list. Authored by Claude C. Hopkins, it contains critical insights that you need to develop marketing communications based on your market positioning.
- The Innovator’s Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business
Written by Clayton M. Christensen, this book was referred to as one of the six most outstanding business books of all time by The Economist. The book highlights how businesses can listen to customers to innovate, adapt, and adopt new technologies. All these makeup what a brand positioning is.
- Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
This book explores the six principles of influence and how businesses can use them to build a positioning that highly persuades. Robert Cialdini wrote the book.
- To Sell is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others
Authored by Daniel H. Pink, the book walks readers through six different successors to an elevator pitch. It highlights the three rules that help understand others’ perspectives and the five frames to make business messaging clearer and highly persuasive.
Conclusion
The above are ten brand resources that every business should have in its library. They are indeed great resources that will help you understand positioning better.
