How To Do Brand Positioning (With Template and Examples)
Updated by Xtensio
Determining how your company will stand out in the real world is a delicate undertaking. Completing the Brand Positioning Canvas will walk you through the motions of establishing how your product or service will be developed and how its story will be told to your customers. This is a vital internal study to set a strong strategic foundation for the long haul and it will sync your team’s actions under the same values. You will be digging for the core, the soul of your business. Now let’s get to it! Explore this template.
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Xtensio’s FREE Brand Positioning Canvas Template and Editable Examples are your starting point to create and share a successful brand positioning canvas, without any experience.
Anchor your company’s strategic thinking with a clear Brand Positioning Statement.
Establishing your brand’s position in the marketplace is not an overnight exercise. Whether you are a startup in the early stages of developing a product or a long-established company seeking to reinvent itself and stay relevant, positioning and repositioning your brand is meant to be a process. The end result, however, must be a crystal clear brand positioning statement that will inform both internal decision-making and external communications and how the two feed off of each other.
In Escape Velocity: Free Your Company’s Future From the Pull of the Past, Geoffrey A. Moore underlines the importance of being able to tell your value in the simplest terms. “Your story has to be told, at least initially in the business language of the problems and not in the technical language of the solution.” A consistent, overarching narrative of what your business is all about, helps shape team dynamics and operations. The concepts you create for your brand govern the development of your product or service. It’s the heart of your business, helping others to understand who you are and what you have to offer. Everyone in your firm can stay on the same page if they have a clear grasp of your brand position.
“When a company is clear about its purpose, the outside world comes knocking at its door with opportunities.”
Frederic Laloux, Reinventing Organizations
Target Audience
Defining your ideal customer is a difficult task in and of itself. Some have coined the term “post-demographic consumerism” to describe our current era. It’s no secret that today’s customer behavior is becoming increasingly complex, defying preconceptions. Traditional audience segments such as age, gender, income, family, region, and so on simply don’t cut it. Marketers are creating hyper-targeted communications to catch the nuances in order to better reach their target demographic.
There is a flip side to this. Evidently, each user segment will have lots of unique identifiers; but what is it that brings them together? What is that common trait that draws them to your brand?
Who’s most affected by a problem? Who will benefit most from your solution? What differentiates people within each audience segment? How does your target audience differ from your competitor’s? Can they be identified by a common goal, desire, aspiration, frustration or challenge?
To further explore this road, try Xtensio’s User Persona Creator or User Persona Comparison tools. These are good preliminary steps to analyze your audience as it grows and evolves.
Problem
It’s essential to succinctly capture the problem you’re trying to solve. Without clearly interpreting the problem that you believe exists in the world, you can’t adequately explain how your product or service will solve it. That said, building a business around solving a specific problem is not always black-and-white. Occasionally, a more obvious problem might actually be a symptom of a greater underlying issue. Everyone and their mother knows about the “faster horses” analogy by now and has opinions about its merits. You can’t always drive business decisions by asking your customers what they want. A solution that drives an invention or an innovation comes from the “why” of it all. If you ask those same people why they need faster horses, they’d probably say something like, “I need to get to work faster.” Now that captures the essence of the issue right there!
Consider some of these questions to identify “the problem” that most affects your target audience:
- What obstacles do potential users face in solving the problem?
- Does the problem cost people time? Money? Both?
- Has something inefficient or ineffective become the norm and people don’t even realize it?
- Are other brands trying to address the same problem less successfully?
Solution
Are you effectively communicating what your solution is adding to your customers’ lives? Consider the ways your product or service is the best option available for your target audience.
- Is your solution thoroughly solving a problem?
- Does your solution fit in the marketplace like a glove? Meaning, does it compliment what’s already out there? Does it fill in a gap that the competition is leaving open?
- Is it an invention? Is it creating a new category in the market?
- Is it a disruptive solution? Will it turn the marketplace on its head, making competition irrelevant? If so, does it have the potential to create a range of problems of its own?
- What’s innovative about it?
Market Landscape
How will you fit in the market? Who are your biggest competitors? How is your audience currently solving “the problem”? Often, ideas are born in response to the rise of a dominant player in the marketplace. In other circumstances, company leaders will examine the market and enter with a similar offering but a clear differentiating point, competing head-on. Many businesses misjudge the competition in their market segment. It’s critical to anticipate where you’ll fit in the market landscape before deciding what will set you apart.
“Where there’s no competition, there’s no market. This is why startups who have “no competition” have trouble engaging partners and making sales. Your competitive set is part of your overall value proposition. So choose it with care… If you position yourself credibly relative to worthy alternatives, that speaks well on your behalf.”
— Geoffrey A. Moore, Escape Velocity
Keep in mind: Competitors validate that the problem you’re trying to solve has a market and that you have the potential to get a slice of that market by differentiating yourself well enough.
You can tap into Xtensio’s Competitive Analysis template to gain a deeper understanding of your competition. It will give you a good start in comparing the top players out there.
Unfair Advantage
Now that you have the lay of the land, you want to explain why your product or service is the best option for your target audience. Do you offer a feature that puts you ahead of the pack? Is your pricing structure more competitive? The distinguishing factors may be on your user-facing product offering, but they may also be all about what happens behind the scenes. Your talented and dedicated team, your unique expertise in the field, your processes, your efficiency, anything proprietary that you have created—whatever defines “your way” of doing business. By considering what distinguishes you from your competitors, you can start to think about how to convey those differences effectively.
Reason to Believe
With a clear understanding of your Unfair Advantage, you can explain why people should use your product or service. The Reason to Believe is meant to be a compelling message to persuade users. What evidence can you point to that supports your Unfair Advantage? (If you’re having trouble filling out this section, you can work on Xtensio’s SWOT Analysis or alternative strategic planning tools to better understand your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.) Or try a SOAR analysis to focus on strengths and aspirations in your brand strategy.
Related how-to guides and free templates!
The Brand Positioning Statement
The goal of completing the Brand Positioning Canvas is to arrive at your brand positioning statement, a clear and concise explanation that will guide your team or company in how it makes decisions. This statement organizes the insights you’ve gleaned from going through this process.
“Avoid all buzzwords. If there’s one word that describes your positioning statement, it should be “human.”
Arielle Jackson, First Round Review
Here’s a suggested formula for creating your brand positioning statement:
For the TARGET AUDIENCE who has this PROBLEM, your company provides this SOLUTION. Different from the MARKET LANDSCAPE, you have this ADVANTAGE by providing this REASON TO BELIEVE.
Your statement isn’t meant to be used for your marketing, but it will inform those efforts. It won’t be your tagline, but your tagline should spring from it. Your brand guidelines stem from this overarching brand positioning statement, and guide the production of creative assets, external and internal facing marketing and communication materials. You can be flexible with how you format your brand positioning statement as long as you address the fundamental components of the brand positioning canvas.
For example, First Round Review highlights Amazon, which used the following positioning statement in 2001 when the company primarily sold books:
For World Wide Web users
Who enjoy books,
Amazon is a retail bookseller
That provides instant access to over 1.1 million books.
Unlike traditional book retailers,
Amazon provides a combination of extraordinary convenience, low prices and comprehensive selection.
And here’s one that Harley-Davidson shared publicly:
The only motorcycle manufacturer
That makes big, loud motorcycles
For macho guys (and “macho wannabes”)
Mostly in the United States
Who wants to join a gang of cowboys
In an era of decreasing personal freedom.
“What is going to be your claim to fame, the foundation of your unmatchable offer? To answer that question, you must declare your core.”
Geoffrey A. Moore, Escape Velocity
Bringing it all Together
Defining your brand positioning statement shapes your company’s product, messaging, design and unique value. For larger companies, the brand’s position is gospel; for startups, it provides focus amid growing pains and necessary pivots. The brand positioning statement becomes a resource when you’re faced with the question of whether or not a potential decision is “on brand”. The final statement at which you arrive is just the beginning of your work. What’s most important is the process by which you arrived at this statement, the research you conducted, all aspects of your product or service you weighed and prioritized. As your company evolves, your team grows, the marketplace transforms, there will be times to revisit and keep your anchor in check. Regularly update your ecosystem map, content strategy and conduct usability testing reports. Your positioning will help you stay true to the vision and sustain a strong brand presence.
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Brand Positioning Frameworks Compared
There is no single right way to build a brand positioning. Different frameworks suit different company stages, team structures, and market conditions. Understanding the options helps you choose the approach that fits your situation rather than forcing a framework that was designed for a different context.
The Positioning Statement (Ries and Trout). The classic framework from “Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind” distills brand positioning into a single sentence: “For [target audience] who [need], [brand] is the [category] that [key benefit] because [reason to believe].” Its strength is simplicity. It forces you to make clear choices about audience, category, and differentiation in one concise format. It works best for companies that operate in a well-defined category where the competitive set is obvious. Its weakness is that it can oversimplify brands that serve multiple audiences or compete across categories.
The Brand Key (Unilever). Developed by Unilever for managing its portfolio of 400+ brands, the Brand Key is a nine-element framework that covers root strengths, competitive environment, target, insight, benefits, values, reasons to believe, discriminator, and brand essence. It is thorough and forces teams to consider competitive context alongside internal identity. It works best for established brands that need to align large teams around a shared understanding. Its weakness is complexity: it requires significant research to fill out meaningfully and can feel bureaucratic for startups or small teams.
The Brand Pyramid. This framework builds positioning from the bottom up, starting with attributes (what the brand has), moving to functional benefits (what it does), emotional benefits (how it makes people feel), brand personality (how it behaves), and brand essence (its core idea) at the top. The pyramid works well for brands where emotional connection is a primary driver: luxury goods, lifestyle brands, consumer products. It is less useful for B2B or SaaS brands where functional differentiation matters more than emotional resonance.
The Positioning Canvas. A more visual, collaborative approach that maps your brand against competitors across multiple dimensions simultaneously. The brand positioning canvas template lets teams plot competitive positions, identify white space, and test different positioning angles in a workshop format. It works well for teams that need to evaluate multiple positioning options quickly and want stakeholder input during the process. Share the canvas as a live link so remote team members can contribute to the same working document.
Choosing the right framework. For early-stage startups defining positioning for the first time, start with the positioning statement. Its constraints force clarity. For mid-stage companies repositioning after market shifts, the positioning canvas helps evaluate options collaboratively. For enterprise brands aligning global teams, the Brand Key or Brand Pyramid provides the depth needed for consistent execution across regions and channels. Whichever framework you choose, keep it as a living deliverable in your workspace rather than a static slide deck that gets forgotten after the strategy offsite.
How to Validate Your Brand Positioning
A brand positioning that only exists as an internal document is an assumption, not a strategy. Validation turns assumptions into evidence and reveals whether your intended positioning matches how the market actually perceives you.
Customer perception surveys. Ask current customers three questions: “What does [brand] do?”, “Who is [brand] for?”, and “What makes [brand] different from alternatives?” If the answers do not match your positioning statement, you have a gap between intention and reality. Run this survey quarterly with a sample of 50 to 100 customers. Track changes over time. The trends matter more than any single response.
Competitive win/loss analysis. Interview customers who chose you and customers who chose a competitor. The reasons they give for their decision reveal which elements of your positioning are working and which are invisible. If customers consistently say they chose you for a reason that is not in your positioning, you may be positioning around the wrong differentiator. If they chose a competitor for something you also offer, your messaging is failing to communicate a real strength.
Message testing. Before committing to a positioning across all channels, test variations with small audiences. A/B test landing page headlines, run social media ads with different value propositions, or present positioning options to a focus group. Data from message testing prevents the expensive mistake of building an entire brand campaign around a positioning that does not resonate. Share test results as a live link so the team can track which messages perform best without waiting for a summary meeting.
Internal alignment audits. Ask 10 people across different departments to describe your brand positioning in one sentence. If you get 10 different answers, your positioning is not clear enough to execute consistently. Sales will describe the brand differently than marketing, which will describe it differently than product. Internal alignment audits reveal where the positioning breaks down in practice, not just in theory.
Signs your positioning is working: Sales conversations start with the customer already understanding what you do. Inbound leads match your target audience profile. Competitors reference you when describing their differentiation. Your content ranks for the terms that reflect your intended positioning.
Signs your positioning is failing: You compete primarily on price. Customers describe you using generic category language rather than your specific differentiation. Your sales team has to explain what makes you different in every call. Marketing campaigns perform inconsistently because each one frames the brand slightly differently.
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