27 Competitive Positioning Examples to Build Differentiation

If you are a business owner, especially a relatively new one, a big question you might be spending sleepless nights on, is how to establish differentiation for your business and brand, especially in highly competitive markets.

What makes you different? Why should anyone choose YOU?

This post will cover the meaning of competitive positioning and why it is important to have a positioning strategy. You will also see 27 brand positioning case studies and examples, so you can be inspired with ideas on positioning yourself in the market.

What is competitive positioning?

Your competitive positioning is the unique, differentiated perception of your brand and business in the minds of your target audience. Your competitive advantage over others.

It is your whole message of who you are, why you do what you do, what you offer, how it helps others, what your brand personality and communication is life, what emotions you invoke in others.

What is a competitive positioning strategy?

So it’s usually not one thing but the whole brand story put together. But there are a few competitive advantage factors and strategies that you can follow for your business model.

Let’s look at some of these factors and some business/ brand positioning statement examples of how some brands have defined their brand attributes and established their differentiation.

What is the importance of a positioning strategy?

24% more new business applications were submitted in 2020 compared to 2019. As more businesses enter the market, the more important it becomes for each business to differentiate itself, and be attractive for their direct target audience.

So you need a clear positioning approach and a clear brand messaging architecture.

27 different positioning strategies and examples

1. A targeted audience

As small business owners, I know we tend to want to make our products and services available for everyone and not eliminate anyone.

But the truth is, as you’ve probably heard a zillion times, it is always better to go niche, focus on a specific type of customer who can relate to your brand and start using it, build a loyal customer following, and then expand to a broader customer base. Here’s an example.

Brand Focus: Axe

Axe launched by understanding, on one hand, the need for young teenage boys to attract girls, and on the other, that they lacked the masculinity and charm to do so.

So the brand positioned itself as a magnet that would immediately help the young men lacking the confidence to have a masculine charm that would make young women run after them.

Needless to say, this specific focus on young men, with a specific benefit, unlike any other, created an immediate and differentiated strong brand positioning that has remained strong over the years.

And even though they extended the product line to body and hair products, they still retained the same target audience.

Recently, they have been strengthening this audience focus with a deeper brand message, by calling out to these men who feel a bit lost, to be themselves, irrespective of what the world thinks.

2. Niche focus

A business can also focus on an uber-specific market or create one of its own.

Brand Focus: Bonobos

The founders of this brand, Andy Dunn and Brian Spaly realized a specific problem: most men didn’t like store-bought pants.

So they started their business to create the perfect pair of pants. And they kept at it till they made millions in sales, just with pants.

So while their business fell within the scope of men’s apparel, by focusing on a single product and perfecting it. They worked in a niche segment of their own with a single brand pillar and won at it before expanding to other menswear categories as well.

Image source: https://mashable.com

3. A specific solution

A brand grows by doing either of 2 things: solving a problem/ creating a desire.

You can also create a niche by solving a specific problem within a specific industry targeted to a specific client. In fact, this is the quickest way to establish yourself for small businesses.

Brand Focus: PooPourri

This bold small business brand focuses on a very specific problem: the embarrassment of the smell of your nature’s call.

Especially targeted women, who want to present themselves as very lady-like and groomed, and yet may get stuck in uncomfortable situations if they have to visit the bathroom at work or a boyfriend’s apartment.

Air fresheners make this smell worse. PooPourri launched a solution, becoming one of the most sought-after gifts in the holiday season in 2014.

I’ll let you watch the video below (that went viral, btw) to know more 😉

4. Breaking the industry rules

Sometimes the way to create a robust differentiation is by going against the norm in the industry.

Brand Focus: Imperfect Produce

While most supermarkets and grocery stores tend to put the best product in front of their customers, a startup led by Ben Simon decided to change all that by selling all the ‘ugly produce’, the ones that would normally be trashed, at discounted prices.

5. Innovation

Building your competitive positioning as a constantly innovating brand is hard to accomplish because you have to keep it up at all costs. But if you can achieve this, it can do wonders for your equity and business growth.

Brand Focus: Apple

The Macintosh computer when the world only knew PCs and Windows, the iPod when the world had become comfortable with the Walkman, the MacBook Air when people had grown used to lugging around heavy laptops – Apple has consistently broken the norm and launched something new which the world never expected.

Image source: https://donovan-group.com

But as mentioned above, such differentiation is hard to maintain. A common opinion seems that without much new powerful innovation, its strong brand positioning has been slipping over the years.

6. Product Features

While most products and services claim to be unique, the truth is that very close substitutes exist for most, giving plenty of choice to the customer.

You can create a differentiated product positioning strategy by creating a product that is completely unique and hasn’t existed in the market before. For example, you can follow a Blue Ocean strategy and can really tap into the white spaces in the market.

Brand Focus: GoPro

When all the cameras in the market had to be managed delicately, GoPro launched an action camera that was waterproof, lightweight but strong, and most of all, wearable. All at a modest price. You could shoot the sport while doing the sport.

This differentiation through product features completely revolutionized the camera industry and created a differentiated positioning for GoPro.

7. Performance

When your features are not that different from other products and services, one way to create that is excellence in performance. When you want to position your brand as the best in performance, you must consistently deliver on that. Not just once but over a period of time, for the positioning to really stick in the minds of the audience.

Brand Focus: BMW

One brand that has achieved this is BMW. It has always positioned itself as ‘luxury performance’, with the tagline: The Ultimate Driving Machine.

It focuses on delivering high quality with best-in-class engineering, with a sophisticated and comfortable driving experience.

You have to be careful of a brand positioning like this, however. Because if you can’t keep it up, and you have a competitor that starts to deliver better performance than you, your whole brand equity could be at stake.

8. Functional Benefit

We had features, then performance. While these are differences, going one step further would be focusing on a specific benefit that the customer can get.

Brand Focus: Death Wish Coffee

While some people like to know the source of their coffee or focus on the taste, the founder of Death Wish Coffee, Mike Brown, a small business owner, understood that some people are just looking for really strong coffee. And that’s what he based the brand differentiation around. Simple, direct, functional.

9. Claims

Sometimes functional benefits can be made even stronger by proven, scientific claims that give you an edge over the competition. These could be specific, patented technologies or the level of results your brand can deliver.

Brand Focus: Whole Foods

The top retailer of natural and organic products in the US, the Whole Foods brand has not only a positioning but also a trademark of ‘America’s Healthiest Grocery Store.’ It highly emphasizes ethics and doesn’t stock products with harmful ingredients or preservatives. Making such a big claim is key to retaining customer trust and loyalty.

But that also means they have to ensure that no competitor can up their ethical practices and product offers to take this claim away from them.

10. Options

Though research says that too many brands can confuse customers, sometimes the flexibility of options to choose from is exactly what makes the customer, or a group of them, seek out a brand.

Brand Focus: Baskin-Robbins

This ice cream brand based its whole proposition on having 31 flavors of ice cream, one for each day of the month. And they also keep rotating the flavors. So no matter what your taste buds are craving, they always have something for you and new options.

They have also used this number 31 in various communication and promos to retain brand recognition.

11. Emotional Benefit

A brand is not just about the direct product benefits. It gains recognition and popularity because of the underlying benefit of using this brand. Because one of the most important thing to know about the consumer purchase process is that people buy emotions, not products.

Brand Focus: Coca-Cola

The brand quickly recognized that the most powerful way to differentiate itself in the customers’ minds, especially from their close rival Pepsi, was to use emotional connections.

So they positioned the brand as one associated with connections, happiness, a good life, smiles, etc. As one that creates a sense of belonging.

12. Price

Price is one of the biggest differentiation factors, and a common question to ask while creating your buyer persona is how price-sensitive your audience is.

Brand Focus: Walmart

Image source: https://www.ries.com

But remember that if you want to keep low prices, your competitors can always undercut you, and you may get sucked into a price war you cannot control. So don’t just go for low prices as your competitive positioning unless you have a business model like the 99c store.

Many brands claim to be able to customize their products and services to meet their client’s needs to a T. And, in fact, for the service industry, that’s almost a given.

Brand Focus: Rolls Royce

But a product company that takes it a few steps ahead is Rolls Royce. Because, unlike other luxury cars, it’s not just about being expensive and plush.

You can’t just pick up a RR from the showroom. If the company decides they are okay for you to own a RR, you order a bespoke Rolls Royce from scratch.

14. Location

Sometimes you can create a business model in a way where the biggest differentiation could be your brand’s physical location. But you have to ensure that it is not easy to replicate by your competition. This could be especially applicable in the case of brick-and-mortar institutions like hotels and restaurants.

Brand Focus: Level 33

Located in Singapore, at 156m above sea level, on the 33rd floor of a Singapore skyscraper, Level 33 is the highest craft brewery of the urban world and includes a restaurant.

The view from the bar makes the experience even more exceptional: the ultra-chic skyline of Singapore, one of the world’s most well-developed nations.

So sure, other urban breweries can be at an even higher level than this brewery. But it would probably not have the same view and, thus, never have the same competitive advantage.

15. Distribution Channels

Sometimes you can even use a distribution channel or availability as a source of differentiation.

Brand Focus: Thermomix

Thermomix is a kitchen appliance to help you prepare easy meals. But it doesn’t make its products available on its website, Amazon, or other retailers. It follows the Tupperware direct selling model of having their own reps use the appliance at dinner parties to showcase it to a close group of people, who then host their own parties.

It insists on building a close relationship with the buyer by letting them buy it only from their reps.

While this distribution channel is not new per se, Thermomix is the only brand adapting it in the kitchen appliance industry, which helps to create its differentiation.

16. Purpose

One way of creating brand differentiation that has been gaining momentum recently is the purpose of why a business exists.

Studies show that purpose-driven brands grow 2X faster than those without.

Though you should have a purpose with a higher good in mind, and not just for positioning, sometimes, if you stay true to your purpose with every business and communication decision, your brand will automatically generate its own differentiation.

Brand Focus: 4Ocean

The brand aims to clean up the ocean and coastlines, one pound at a time. And you can help by buying a bracelet, which will fund it.

One bracelet = one pound of trash. So essentially, though the bracelet is the product they sell, this business and brand is about the purpose.

Now they are adding a new product to their offer: a reusable plastic bottle. But the competition of this bottle is not any other such bottle product because the one from 4Ocean is being sold for a specific purpose.

17. Mission & Vision

While the purpose is the fundamental of why a brand exists, the mission and vision of a brand is how, through their products/ services, they aim to do good for a specific set of people in a specific way.

Brand Focus: Always

A feminine personal care brand, Always states its mission is to empower women to live life without limits through trusted feminine care products, confidence, and puberty education.

It demonstrated this with a very powerful campaign, turning a phrase used almost insultingly, to a celebration of girl power, with the #LikeaGirl campaign, by connecting its mission to its products, and creating a differentiation with all other similar brands in the market.

18. Values

Your business can stand out by what it stands for, even more than what it sells.

Brand Focus: Patagonia

This retailer of outdoor sports clothing is one of the best examples of brand values becoming a brand differentiation. Patagonia has always championed the cause of protecting the environment, protesting against measures that could destroy it, and helping people participate in movements to save it.

Even as early as 2011, they increased brand awareness and sales with their ‘Don’t buy this jacket’ campaign, asking people NOT to buy their products unless absolutely required, even if it was Black Friday.

It has continued staying true to those values to the extent of asking people to take action against the President’s move to reduce support for national monuments in Utah.

With consistent actions and campaigns like this, the brand has always retained its competitive positioning through its  brand values of being an environment protector.

19. Process (Source/ Ingredients)

You can also differentiate by the ingredients or composition of your business products.

Brand Focus: Biotherm

This beauty brand bases not just its positioning but also its name on the thermal plankton from the Pyrenees sources. All their products have at least some active ingredients from there, and they have retained this story for almost 70 years.

20. Process (Method)

You can also create your competitive advantage and position through the process in which your products are manufactured.

Brand Focus: Lush

While most beauty products are made in a factory, Lush Cosmetics stands out by having handmade products made of organic ingredients, like fruit and vegetables.

Even though it has a close competitor in Body Shop, which also claims to be good for the environment, the positioning of having its products handmade, along with minimal-waste environmental-friendly packaging, really gives Lush an edge.

Image Source: https://aventuramall.com

Uniqueness is the process by which your customers actually receive your products or services.

Brand Focus: Domino’s Pizza

Pizza is one of the most common foods for home delivery. Domino’s created their differentiation by delivering under 30 min or free concept, which is how the brand is remembered today.

If the look and feel of most of the brands in your industry tend to go in a certain direction, you can choose to differentiate with your brand look and feel.

Brand Focus: Benefit

While many other cosmetic brands go by the glamorous, fashionable look, Benefit Cosmetics really stands out by its girly, cheeky, playful, fun, ‘grabbing life by the giggles’ way.

Related: How to Choose the Brand Color Palette for Your Business

23. Brand Personality (Tone of Voice)

A tone of voice is the style of written and audible communication through which the brand expresses itself. This follows the overall brand personality and values and can be a big differentiating factor.

Brand Focus: MailChimp

MailChimp is an online marketing platform best known as an email marketing tool. And while it is free and simple to use, it differentiates from most of its competitors by its unique, creative, fun ways of tone of messaging.

24. People

The people who run your business or brand can also create your competitive positioning.

Brand Focus: La Locanda dei Girasoli

A pizza restaurant in Rome. It can’t get any more average than that, right?

This restaurant tried to prove that wrong by having their whole team comprised of people with Down Syndrome, to help them live a life of dignity and to pick up professional skills to prepare them for a better future.

25. User experience

When customers explore the products to buy, they want to know that they will be easy to use. And once they have bought, they want to have a good experience of using the products. Normally most companies would try to make this process as simple as possible.

Brand Focus: IKEA

Ikea turned this concept upside down, by putting the onus of the user experience on the buyer. The customers must choose, carry (heavy furniture or not), take it home, and assemble by themselves. So instead of being completely customer-centric, some aspects can even induce customer pain.

However, it ensures that the instruction manuals are extremely intuitive, thus making the assembly process quite smooth while staying a fun challenge.

26. Customer Experience

Service levels can bring an added level of differentiation, especially if other brands are not making it easy for the customer.

Brand Focus: Amazon

Amazon has over 3 billion products across 11 marketplaces. So a customer has millions of options, across categories, at different price points.

It has real customer reviews for other customers to get a good impression of the quality of the product. And even then, after you buy, and open the product, if you change your mind, you can send it back, for no extra charge, without any hassle. And you get your money back.

If you have any questions, you can quickly reach customer service, who will solve your problems. Otherwise, It is not just a shopping experience. It has truly brought a new meaning to the term customer experience.

27. Endorsement

When your brand is endorsed by a person or organization that already has good credibility in the market, it differentiates you in the minds of the buyers and even elevates your positioning.

Brand Focus: Lux

For years the Unilever brand Lux has positioned itself as the soap of choice for superstars. While the soap itself is nothing special, and the look of the brand has evolved over the years to match the changing times, what has remained constant is its aspirational brand image as the soap of celebrity actors across generations.

As you can see, many ways exist to create your differentiated brand positioning. And you might have one or two factors that are mostly differentiated. But remember:

Concluding Notes

Here is a recap of the 27 ways you can create your competitive positioning and differentiation.

Here are some additional tips on creating your differentiation:

1. Competitive positioning could comprise a specific functional or operational differentiation. Based on that, remember to create a powerful brand story first before you create your key messaging.

2. Ensure that your brand and marketing messaging reflect accurately and powerfully your true competitive positioning.

3. Uphold your competitive positioning in all key operations and content of your brand.