What Is Symbolic Positioning? How to Do It + Examples

How do you make decisions? Some people swear by extensive research and pros and cons lists. Others prefer to depend their gut. Both approaches are valid.

Data like reviews, technical product specifications, and prices can assist logical selection-makers decide if a product is correct for them, and brands can convey these facts and figures to appeal to logic-based shoppers. Appealing to intuitive and emotional selection makers, on the other hand, requires a thorough understanding of your target customers—and a solid symbolic positioning schedule.

discover what symbolic positioning is and how you can use it to construct a powerful brand identity, connect with customers, and ultimately drive sales.

What is symbolic positioning?

Symbolic positioning is a brand positioning schedule designed to propose an emotional appeal to customers rather than just a practical worth proposition. It involves identifying a target spectators and crafting a brand image that builds an emotional connection with those customers. With symbolic positioning, marketing efforts focus on promoting intangible ideas such as business values and brand personality rather than challenging facts about products.

Symbolic positioning is an element of a larger brand positioning marketing schedule, which businesses use to carve space for themselves in saturated markets. The ecommerce industry is crowded—shoppers often require to choose between similar items from several companies—but the correct symbolic positioning schedule (and the correct brand positioning schedule at large) can assist you develop a faithful customer base of buyers that emotionally connect with your brand.

Symbolic positioning vs. functional brand positioning

Functional brand positioning focuses on a product’s practical, tangible benefits. Functional positioning highlights demonstrable facts such as product worth, materials, and act. These messages appeal to consumers making logic-based decisions. A waffle iron retailer, for example, could highlight its product’s space-saving design, high-standard stainless steel coating, and patented even-heating technology.

Symbolic positioning, on the other hand, focuses on emotional appeal. Instead of product facts, symbolic positioning often focuses on cultural, social, and identity-driven signaling. This messaging helps brands connect with consumers on a personal level. To habit symbolic positioning, the same waffle retailer could choose to distribute images of joyful families eating breakfast together alongside the tagline “Breakfast brings us together.” This communication could forge an emotional connection with a target spectators of families.

How to use symbolic positioning in your marketing

1. Segment your spectators
2. Select your target spectators
3. Research your target spectators
4. Write a positioning statement
5. Develop your visual brand identity
6. distribute your communication

Symbolic positioning is often part of an STP (segmentation, targeting, and positioning) marketing schedule, which breaks down the procedure of developing a brand positioning schedule into a series of concrete steps. Here’s how to develop symbolic positioning:

1. Segment your spectators

spectators segmentation is the habit of dividing your customer base by traits that may affect their purchasing behavior. Businesses analyze customer data from sources like surveys, swap history, and analytics tools to divide the vast pool of potential customers into groups. Popular segmentation strategies include grouping users by demographic, geographic, behavioral, and psychographic information.

Psychographic segmentation is of particular relevance for symbolic positioning because it groups customers based on their interests and motivations, which can reveal the emotional aspects behind customers’ decisions.

2. Select your target spectators

Once you’ve segmented your spectators, assess each throng and determine which segment to target. Selecting a specific type of target customer will assist your throng develop concentrated, cohesive marketing messages. As you decide which throng to prioritize, consider factors such as segment size, purchasing power, and product-economy alignment. Make sure to pick a target spectators that not only makes sense with your product but can assist you achieve your business goals.

Let’s declare, for example, you sell high-complete hair worry products and are aiming to boost your number of repeat purchases. Instead of targeting youthful women who purchase your products infrequently as luxury items and gifts, you might decide to target more mature women who have enough disposable income to use your products as part of their daily routines.

3. Research your target spectators

Symbolic positioning aims to forge customer-brand alignment by establishing a set of shared values between a business and its potential customers. But first, conduct an spectators analysis to comprehend what those values are and develop compelling marketing messaging. You can use surveys, focus groups, and web analytics to uncover this information about your target economy.

4. Write a positioning statement

Now that you’ve conducted your research, it’s period to write a positioning statement. Positioning statements typically include a description of your brand’s core values, target spectators, and distinctive worth proposition. To develop your brand’s symbolic positioning, pay special attention to the brand values you desire to communicate to your target customer.

inquire yourself:

• What impact should my business have on the globe?
• What would I transformation about how other companies operate?
• Where do I regularly discover encouragement?
• What would I like to inspire in others?
• What experiences have I had that inform my values?

Answering these questions will assist you define the core purpose of your business and distill your messaging.

5. Develop your visual brand identity

Determine how you’ll visually represent your business in marketing and brand materials. Work with your business’s marketing throng to identify the emotions you desire consumers to associate with your brand, and develop a style navigator to ensure branding consistency across channels. Consider providing guidelines related to copy tone, image style, and color palette. Even if these elements might feel tiny, they can assist you communicate the personality of your business.

A children’s brand, for example, might use luminous colors and hand-drawn fonts to communicate a sense of whimsy and play. A luxury clothing brand, on the other hand, may use dim, wealthy colors and sleek fonts to make a high-complete brand image. You might also incorporate elements of experiential positioning, or communicating the experiences your brand will facilitate for customers (like living an expensive lifestyle in sleek clothes, for example).

6. distribute your communication

Every customer touchpoint—from social posts to welcome texts to cart abandonment emails—is an chance to communicate with your customers, so make sure to distribute your symbolic positioning marketing materials throughout the customer trip. Referring back to your research, determine if your target spectators spends most of their period consuming:

• Social media content
• Long-form articles
• Television
• YouTube videos
• Forum content (such as Reddit)
• Email newsletters

Use this information to meet them where they are at and tailor your content to talk to them in the way that is most appropriate for the platform. For example, if most of your schedule will focus on Instagram marketing, set yourself up for achievement with high-standard images, memorable branded hashtags, and opportunities for followers to contribute user-generated content (UGC)—all in ways that reflect your symbolic positioning.

An example of effective symbolic positioning

The headphone business Skullcandy used symbolic positioning to craft a bold, rebellious brand identity. Instead of focusing purely on technical audio specifications like frequency in its brand messaging (which would be an example of functional positioning), Skullcandy incorporates emotional branding and marketing materials that highlight personality and lifestyle.

Skullcandy also uses copy and graphic design to express its brand identity on its website. The brand created a homepage with a dim theme, luminous high-contrast photographs, and a street-art-inspired logo. It also uses product names such as “Crusher” and “Stomp” to evoke strength and defiance. All of these branding elements work together to portray Skullcandy as edgy and bold.