Strategic Positioning & Messaging

Successful marketing and communications campaigns must be built on strong messaging and positioning platforms to ensure not just consistency of messaging, but that market positioning and messaging aligns with business goals. Using our proprietary process, we can review and update your current platform, or build a new one from scratch.

Positioning is the conceptual space a brand occupies in the minds of its customers and other stakeholders. Brands that occupy compelling market positions are advantaged in terms of sales, recruiting, retention and market valuation.

The Bold approach to positioning is grounded in the idea that powerful market positions can be built and reinforced through analysis and effective communication of a brand’s competitive advantage to its stakeholders. As such, a brand’s positioning must resonate across the stakeholder spectrum, while motivating individuals on their own terms.

A brand’s positioning should be built on the value it delivers or plans to deliver to the market. Such value propositions are the ultimate benefit promised to the customer. As a promise, value propositions necessarily include both rational and emotional dimensions while defining a clear competitive advantage. 

A positioning and messaging platform is a tool for the powerful and concise articulation of a brand’s story. The platform includes a positioning statement, associated value propositions, and the key messages explaining the brand’s competitive advantages, and value provided by those competitive advantages.

The most effective positioning and messaging platforms also include proof points that validate and reinforce the key messages. They are tangible examples of how a brand has delivered - or will deliver - on its promises. Proof points may include technical data, information on the brand’s growth, market penetration and opportunity, example implementations and success stories, relevant trends, information about partners or customers, and biographic data on the executive team and investors.

An effective positioning platform requires the discipline of concise language. A single page with a brief positioning statement, three-to-four key messages, and associated value propositions and proof points is the output of our positioning and messaging process. A properly constructed messaging platform becomes the foundation for telling the brand’s story in potent, concise language. As such, it can be leveraged for thought leadership including executive speeches and written content, as well as a strategic tool for guiding marketing and sales campaigns. 

We organize the process of positioning and messaging in three phases: Research & Analysis, Workshop & Validation, and Refinement & Integration. Research often includes customer and executive interviews, industry and financial analyst reports, data from customer personas and digital audience panels, and insights from customer journey maps and other associated data. 

This research informs the implementation of a strategic workshop that includes company executives and other key stakeholders such as investors or advisors. Inclusion of key stakeholders is critical to establishing consensus around the positioning platform, helping ensure its implementation across all channels.

For more information about Bold’s proprietary approach to positioning and messaging, contact our founders here.