Marketing Positioning Manual

The brand positioning is B2B and the self-positioning is C2N.

Brand positioning is often mentioned, but self-positioning is rarely mentioned.

Positioning Party A’s brand is actually a B2B matter. It is the positioning of Party B’s company and does not necessarily match the individual positioning. It benefits the company, but it doesn’t necessarily apply to individuals.

For example, if your positioning is strategy, but the advantage of the second party is creativity, or your positioning is creativity, but the second party is good at strategy. Then, it will be difficult for you to convince others to trust your expertise. The same applies to the department you are in.

Of course, the two are not in conflict, but we need to clarify the logic.

First, you need to find your own position, and then find a platform to consolidate your position.

For a company, it means first finding its own positioning and then finding a group of people to implement its positioning. The two complement each other and support each other.

No one is omnipotent, find the area in which you are capable.

Professionalism means in-depth research, and human energy is limited, so you must choose your own direction. Of course, if you are talented enough, that’s another matter, but the reality is that 99% of people are ordinary people. If you don’t have enough talent, then leave it to time.

It would be best if you could draw inferences from one example, but it is already difficult for most people to do so. Time may not necessarily bring about qualitative change, but the prerequisite for qualitative change is first of all quantitative change.

Just like playing King of Glory 1v1, you have many heroes, and you are even proficient in these heroes. But if it is a decisive battle, you need to choose the hero who is most reliable, and he is your favorite hero.

Time and resources are limited, so make the best use of them.

We know that brand positioning is a matter of trade-offs. First, consumers’ awareness is limited, and second, companies’ resources are limited. Therefore, in the process of communication, companies need to choose to allocate their budgets in a tilted manner.

The same applies to self-positioning. First, human energy is limited, or time is limited. Second, one’s own budget is also limited. If financial investment is required, then choose to spend most of the money on the most important areas.

Therefore, limited resources should be used in the most core sectors.

T-shaped talents are inevitable, but "one" serves "丨"

In the current brand marketing environment, T-shaped talents have become a trend. Among them, "—" refers to the expansion of horizontal fields, which means having to face the requirement of becoming a "jack of all trades", and "丨" refers to the in-depth cultivation of vertical fields, which means becoming an expert in one of the fields.

But “—” serves “丨”, and the former is the foundation for the latter to be further developed. The priorities cannot be reversed. In the process of our research on self-positioning, we came to the following conclusion: entry-level players focus on horizontal expansion, intermediate players focus on vertical expansion, and advanced players, in addition to vertical expansion, also focus on resource integration.

Avoid the "medium-plate misunderstanding" and "large and comprehensive positioning"

I found two phenomena. First, some friends said that they seemed to understand digital, social, brands, e-commerce, and products. Because of this, their self-positioning became blurred. Second, a friend said that he understands strategy, creativity, media, and copywriting, but when asked what specific aspect he focuses on, his answer is that these are inseparable and generally speaking, they serve the business.

The former phenomenon is the "middle board misunderstanding", which means achieving 60-80 points in each item, which neither becomes a strong point nor becomes a weak point. The latter phenomenon is "big and comprehensive positioning", which means that it seems to focus on the "business" sector, but in fact there is no clear positioning.

When positioning yourself, you can refer to the general logic of "what you have, what you want, and what you give up" .

What you have determines what you can want, and what you want determines what you need to give up. The former is finding a foothold, and the latter is opportunity cost.

01 What's

Before you start positioning yourself, you must first determine what you have. What you have determines what you can want and what you can give up.

What are your abilities?

What is meant here is the ability of relative advantage. First, you can compare yourself with others to see which area you are better at. Second, you can compare yourself with others and see which areas they excel in.

Find what you are good at and what is sharp enough to make the incision. From the perspective of job hunting, the interviewer also needs to find your ability. From the perspective of team management, we lock in different positions based on the department’s organization, and then find matching people based on this demand.

What are your interests?

Interest is the catalyst for profession. It can allow you to go further and become a senior researcher in a certain field. How you like a career and how you deal with a job will have completely different results. This is the influence of your mentality.

If you are passionate about something, you will strive for excellence, you will be demanding, and you will take the initiative to improve yourself. And, you will open this issue up all the time in your life.

What resources are available?

This is mainly for relatively experienced friends. There is no such thing as someone who can succeed by starting from scratch. You need to take stock of the resources you have and find the equipment that belongs to you.

Maybe you have investor resources, IP cross-border resources, public relations media resources, media placement resources, channel resources, etc., these may all become your resource leverage.

Is there any noble person?

A noble person is someone who can guide you in the right direction and push you to reach a certain level quickly. Of course, there is also a saying that it is the person who leads you to wealth.

A noble person is something you can only encounter by chance, but for most ordinary people, a noble person actually plays a very important role. As the saying goes, "A master can only lead you to the door, but practice is up to you." If a master leads you to the door, then as long as you work hard enough, practicing to a certain level will be a natural thing.

What are the chances?

Many times, choice is more important than hard work. If you enter the right industry at the right time, you will be pushed forward by this industry. This is the bonus brought by a specific industry and a specific cycle. If you are not moving in the right direction, the harder you work, the more embarrassed you will be, which means you are giving up more opportunities for compound interest.

It has to be admitted that the rapid accumulation of personal wealth mostly depends on cycles. The cycle is an ups and downs curve, generally a "Z"-shaped curve. The leverage effect should be used at the commanding heights to achieve the maximum benefit for personal improvement.

02 What do you want?

Before deciding what is, you should first decide what it is not. Wanting something means not wanting something. Of course, what I mean by "not wanting" here is to focus your energy on it, not to ignore it completely.

What position?

From the perspective of brand marketing (Party A and Party B), you need to determine the areas you want to focus on, including strategy, creativity, art, media, Akang, content, operations, sales, etc.

The first thing to determine is, what kind of person are you in the workplace? What do you do?

What industry?

Jobs are dependent on industries. Talking about jobs without considering the industry is like building castles in the air, like water without a source and a tree without roots. In other words, the problem you solve is actually a specific industry problem. Whether one has deep roots in the industry is the basic criterion for judging a mid-level/senior brand marketer.

Without in-depth research on a specific industry, it is impossible to find the essence of a specific field. Sometimes high-level people make judgments not based on very rigorous logic, but based on years of field and industry experience.

The so-called intuitive judgment is nothing more than the in-depth and cross-logical analysis of the two. A systematic understanding of a specific industry can also serve as a reference for research in other industries.

What case?

What cases have you worked on in the past? This mainly depends on the projects done by the company you work for. One tip is that when you have determined your own positioning, you can choose certain projects with preference.

Of course, there are many times when you have no choice, but when you can choose, you can actively choose projects that match your positioning.

In addition, there are two other ways. One is to be a freelancer and then use your free work as cases. Of course, this requires works that have been released.

The second is to try to do something related yourself. If you are a copywriter, you can write on a certain topic. If you are a designer, you can also make a poster. Or if you are a strategist, you can also do a virtual case. In order to express your systematic thinking or some professional point of view, you can also write an article and publish it.

There are always more solutions than problems. There are many ways to create your own case, as long as the work can demonstrate your abilities.

03 What to Give Up

Strategy is about trade-offs. When we want something, it also means we need to give up something. Too many people think about what they want, but few are willing to sacrifice what they want.

The phenomenon of "wanting to do everything and achieving 60-80 points in each item" is using tactical diligence to cover up strategic laziness. Strategy is a difficult choice to resist temptation and the courage to take risks. Wanting everything is a sign of unwillingness to take risks and a lack of confidence.

Other information about self-positioning:

If you are optimistic about a certain sector but don't have strong talent, then hard work can make up for lack of talent and the early bird catches the worm. Talent is a forward force that pulls abilities forward and is a BUFF. Effort is the force behind, pushing the ability forward. It is the fuel and the engine.

If you don’t understand time, you can’t understand the value of time. It takes time to solidify your self-positioning, and only by shaking hands and cooperating with time can you become his friend.

In the workplace, self-positioning is dynamic and implies a certain sense of rhythm. Consider all aspects before making a decision, and don’t deviate from it after making a decision. Of course, special circumstances may arise sometimes, and if feasible, we should make the decision promptly.

Always stay humble, pride is the sin that stops you from moving forward.

Whether or not a consumer brand can hold up during a trough is a watershed moment for them. Whether you can hold on when you feel burnout or doubt is a watershed in upgrading your self-positioning.

Not taking shortcuts is the real shortcut. The shortcut here refers to using speculation to quench thirst with poison.

The more confidence you have in the future, the more patience you have in the present.

Summarize

Self-positioning is the logic of long-termism. The so-called ten years to sharpen a sword and 10,000 hours of learning are nothing more than choosing the right path and then working day and night.

As the saying goes, plan before you act. Choosing the right position for yourself is half the battle.

Author: Zang Feng

Source: Strategist Zang Feng