.png)
What is B2B Positioning: Why It Matters And How to Do It Effectively?
December 2, 2024
B2B positioning operates in a similar way you’d select a coffee shop to regularly work from. Among the many cafes in an area, you will prefer one that promotes itself as work-friendly. Here, along with good coffee, it offers a suitable ambience, comfortable seating and access to WiFi. It directly addresses your needs with its positioning in a crowded market.
This is exactly how positioning for B2B works; show what you offer, what makes you different and do it consistently to make an impression on your target customer. It is how your business stands out for others to notice among the competitor crowd. Every business has to first build the right positioning and then consistently market in that direction.
Let's dig deeper into every aspect of B2B positioning, its importance and how to do it right, even if you have to outsource it.
In a literal sense, B2B positioning is where you want to place your business within a market.
In a B2B space, it is how you communicate your offering to other businesses so they choose you as their solution. A product, service or software positioning includes
And most importantly, it covers ‘why you’ over anyone else in the market.
“Positioning is finding the right parking space inside the consumer’s mind and going for it before someone else takes it." This quote by Laura Busche, author and brand strategist, sums up positioning quite well.
Brand positioning for B2B and B2C shares a common goal of reaching their target audience. However, the approach differs in audience variation. Take a comparative look for quick understanding:
Depending on the nature of your services, there are varied ways to put your B2B positioning to show what you offer:
This positioning for B2B highly focuses on product features and performance. It talks about a tool, product design or innovative additions integrated into software.
For example: Dropbox highlights the ability to store and share files, easy to access from anywhere. It talks about the product first over anything else.
This brings about a direct comparison of a business’s affordability against its competitors in the market. It addresses cost-effectiveness as a stronger feature, without compromising on the quality of service.
It highlights the exact use case of a product or service, emphasizing its benefits for the consumer.
Zoom is a good example of application-based positioning, providing a user-friendly video conferencing solution with other integrated tools like team chats, meeting schedulers, recordings, spaces, and other productivity apps.
This method differentiates your product/service from your competitors by creating a positive and memorable perception about you. It clearly states why someone should choose you over any other company in your industry.
For example: BambooHR positions itself against its competitors as well as the traditional HR systems. While highlighting their features like payroll, time management, employee benefits, hiring and onboarding, it emphasizes how it sets people free to do great work.
Once you understand positioning as a concept, tackling the ‘how’ part of it becomes a bit easier. When positioning for B2B, the emphasis throughout lays on answering, ‘Why should a customer choose you over your competitor’. Let us dig deeper into this aspect, step by step.
The first step towards B2B positioning is researching your target audience well. Work closely with the sales team, which is better aware of customer interactions. Understand what customers are looking for in the market. Study your competitor reviews to identify the gaps your product fills. It also helps you understand who cares about the existence of your product.
This part of initial research helps you develop a framework for positioning based on your unique offerings.
Keep monitoring the target market. B2B companies often overlap other markets and lose themselves in the confusion.
Here’s an example: A social media management app offers tools for large marketing teams. These include post creation and posting, multi-account management, advanced analytics, etc.
If they gradually start focusing on freelancers, it may not be able to handle personalisation for individuals or offer simplified features like basic analytics or single-account management. The app could be viewed as too complex by freelancers while large companies may feel it is losing grip at what it previously offered.
Having a reference of the market you specifically cater to is thus crucial for B2B positioning.
What about your product/service distinct you in the market? Analyse your product features and offerings with this focus from the customer’s perspective. Your uniqueness will make it more valuable to them.
For example, does the software help in making quick and accurate reports with the help of AI? Or does it offer credible insights that can speed up decision-making in a business process? Or is it a combination of both in one software, churning out details with a click? Now, that’s something likely to impress a business that runs on data reports and analysis.
Almost every B2B product is introduced to offer a solution. You need to directly define the problem you’re solving for your target audience. Position your service as a problem solver which becomes the main value proposition for your target market.
Here’s an example, Docusign an electronic signature platform, makes business workflows convenient, faster and efficient with their quick method to e-sign anywhere, at any time. It helps smoothen the work process, saves time and money and addresses the environmental impact of saving paper.
Think of B2B positioning as setting your very first pitch to an audience. If they find no context about your product, it will leave room for assumptions, some true, some false.
Like for example, if you simply introduce an ‘HRMS tool’, they will correlate you with the likes of Rippling, Zoho, Deel, BambooHR etc. You need to provide more context whether it is for people management, payroll processing, attendance and reimbursements or an all-in-one integrated tool.
A well-defined context sets off a positive tone of what one can expect from your tool. It will enhance your positioning.
In positioning, have the value offering against a feature upgrade. About 33% of B2B buyers say a lack of personalized prices or discounts is a pain point. If your service is focused on tailored pricing, highlight it as a cost-saving feature.
A positioning statement is a declaration about all the above points in a simpler form to attract your customer. It answers the customer’s pain points with a solution-focused statement, highlighting the value they get. It presents the logic while also targeting an emotion.
Instead of saying, “We are an online payment software,” say, “We simplify the way you process payments, saving you time, reducing errors and guaranteeing secure transactions every time. Focus on your growth while we handle the rest.”
Good positioning for B2B helps you stand out among the crowd of competitors, which is beneficial in the following ways:
Increases brand awareness: A Nielsen’s report reveals brand awareness remains the top objective for marketing. Good positioning helps you get on that path by creating a distinct identity. The way you position your brand and distinguish it from others is a part of creating a recall attribute for brand awareness.
Gives marketing direction: A brand positioning statement forms a blueprint for marketing and development teams. It ensures consistency in messaging and promotional initiatives across all platforms. A consistent brand can increase revenues by 10- 20%.
Highlights unique offerings: Positioning helps show why your product stands out from competitors. It’s a chance to amplify unique features and use them to attract target customers.
Speeds sales funnel: When the audience is clear about your offerings, they can make quicker buying decisions. A brilliant positioning strategy lays out comparisons and case studies as proof. When the customer perceives the immediate benefits for them, you can expect higher closing rates.
Gains customer loyalty: With a strong value proposition and consistent positioning, you can convert your customers into loyal followers. Although customer loyalty takes a while, it starts with maintaining the same positioning from start to end of the sales cycle.
Let us look at some examples where businesses have beautifully aced the positioning game:
1.Shopify: Shopify provides an all-integrated platform for other businesses to set up their online stores. It positions itself as ‘one commerce platform.’
It aims to ease the entire selling process and positions itself very well with app integrations, constant innovations and support teams. It targets every concern a business would face and comes offering a solution. Today it has a hold of 25% of the top global e-commerce brands.
2.Mailchimp: Email marketing is the first thing that comes to mind when talking about Mailchimp because of its strong positioning.
Beyond that, they offer website creation, social media marketing, content creation, automation and ads; their prime identity as an email company stays on. Within email, they highlight comprehensive features like personalization, templates, AI assistance, audience analytics, etc. It builds trust and reliability for businesses to get all their email marketing goals ticked off.
Does only the right B2B positioning guarantee sales? Short answer, no.
Once you are launched in the market, your efforts will be focused on driving the marketing goals. It is a continuous process of content strategy, content creation, trend analysis, repositioning and more to get the desired results. If after all this, you are unable to attract leads, you should consider outsourcing your marketing and lead generation to B2B marketing agencies.
An experienced agency like TripleDart can help you achieve growth, get inbound leads and devise a successful marketing strategy for it to come to reality. We have helped some of the best B2B SaaS startups and scale-ups to move ahead on their growth curve. We have worked on creative and content-making for companies like Gallabox, Phyllo, SeamlessHR, Storylane, Peoplebox, SpendFlo and over 100 more.
With a proven track record of achieving success with our campaigns, we promise to help B2B products and services grow.
Book a call for more details.
A B2B positioning statement is an important branding tool that establishes a business identity, communicates the brand goals, and lays a foundation for how others will perceive your brand products and services. It is a defining statement about business offerings in the market.
Brand positioning shows what makes your product stand out for your customers to remember you. Brand messaging is how you express it in your external communication when reaching your audience. Messaging acts as the means to establish your brand positioning among your audience.
Brand positioning highlights your unique place in the market and what sets it apart from the competitors. Branding executes it for a visual perception with the help of a logo, brand colours, font, language, tone and overall design elements.
Join 70+ successful B2B SaaS companies on the path to achieving T2D3 with our SaaS marketing services.
