We’ll go ahead and say it outright: brand positioning is one of the most confusing and misunderstood principles of marketing. Yet it’s crucially important as everything you do in your business from developing your product to hiring people for your team all depends on and begins with positioning. You want to position yourself well in the mind of your customers, and there are a series of steps you can take to make sure you succeed. Read on to learn four tips on how you can better position your brand this year.

Choose Your Best Strength

One of the surest ways to fail—both in business and life in general—is to try and please everyone or be everything to everyone. If you try and do it all, you could end up like the proverbial jack of all trades, master of none. The goal shouldn’t be to be a good brand for everyone, but the best brand for a specific target market. Take for example JJBender.com, that describes itself as “a market leader in the office automation equipment industry, and specializes in digital press and high volume printing equipment.”

They actually sell a wide variety of equipment, but they’ve positioned themselves as the most reliable resource for high volume printing equipment, including used wide format equipment, which can be purchased by visiting https://www.jjbender.com/used-printing-equipment/

Clearly Identify Your Model Customer

Don’t just think of your target audience as a broad category of people such as “millennials” or “office workers.” You have to literally think of them as individuals, so that you know exactly who it is you’re trying to appeal to and what they are motivated by. Once you’ve identified your model customer, ask yourself how you can best get in front of them, what you can do to make sure they remember you, how you can draw them into your brand, and how you can make sure they stay there.

Identify Your Direct Competitors and Understand How They Are Positioning Their Brands

Once you understand how your competitors are positioning themselves, you can start thinking of how your own brand is different from theirs—what makes you unique, and what makes you better. You want to figure out how to get your target audience to choose you over your competitors, so you’ll have to work out what you can offer that your competitors can not.

Be Consistent

Once you’ve nailed your positioning, you have to get everybody in your company onboard and make sure everyone is aligned in your goals and the message you want to convey to your customers. It’s important that everyone in your business believes in your positioning statement. From there, let it be your guide in every decision you make. Constantly ask yourself if the products and decisions you are making are on brand and in line with your positioning statement. Continue to ask yourself if you are still best serving the model customer you’ve identified. Ask yourself if you’re continuing to differentiate yourself from your competitors.

Taking the time to position your brand properly will make everything else fall into place and make running your business that much easier. It’s worth doing you research, asking experts for advice and getting as much information as you can to make sure you do it right.