It’s not the best companies that prevail in the marketplace, but rather the best brands. The goal of business strategy is not just to be better, but different. Learn how to build a differentiating value proposition by clearly and carefully defining your brand boundaries: Calling, Competencies, Customers, and Culture. Positioning for Professionals shows how a well-defined value proposition can help professional service firms create their own success instead of copying the success of others, including such concepts as: How and why professional service brands become homogenized Why standing for everything is the same as standing for nothing Why there’s no such thing as full service Deep and narrow as a strategic imperative Why it’s better to be a profit leader than a market leader Differentiation and price premiums How to map your brand on the matrix of relevance and differentiation How to define a value proposition that will make your firm intensely appealing to the customers who want you for what you do best Based on the proven premise that the most profitable business strategy is not to aim at the center of the market, but rather at the edges, Positioning for Professionals is written for leaders, managers, and other senior executives of service companies in with a particular emphasis on professional service firms.

Most of us have an intuitive sense of superior branding. We prefer to purchase brands we find distinctive—that deliver on some important, relevant dimension better than other brands. These brands have typically achieved positional advantage. Yet few professionals have had the formal training that goes beyond marketing theory to bridge the “theory-doing gap”—understanding the specific techniques and strategies that can be used to create brands that attain positional advantage in the marketplace. Positioning for Advantage is a comprehensive how-to guide for creating, building, and executing effective brand strategies. Kimberly A. Whitler identifies essential marketing strategy techniques and moves through the major stages of positioning a brand to achieve in-market advantage. Introducing seven tools—from strategic positioning concepts to strategy mapping to influencer maps—Whitler provides templates, frameworks, and step-by-step processes to build and manage growth brands that achieve positional advantage. This book presents real-world scenarios, helping readers activate tools to increase skill in creating brands that achieve positional advantage. Brimming with insights for students and professionals alike, Positioning for Advantage helps aspiring C-level leaders understand not only what superior branding looks like but also how to make it come to life.

Positioning is hot. Not only in the realm of consumer goods manufacturers, but also for other companies, institutions, governments and even individual persons. An explosion of good quality products on the market and targeted media and advertising campaigns has led to an increasing interest from organizations as to how to strategically position their brand. Up to now, only a few books on positioning were published. Positioning the Brand picks up the gauntlet with an approach based on two fundamental choices: Firstly, the book was written from the perspective of the brand manager, and has therefore been shaped as a practical roadmap. Secondly, this book advocates a new stance on positioning, teaching the reader to look from the inside-out, instead of adopting the usual outside-in methodology. This inside-out approach departs from an analysis of the corporate identity, enabling better fulfilment of external positioning, and ensuring internal support. This book is intended for (future) managers, marketing professionals and communication professionals responsible for the commercial success and reputation of a brand. The contents have a practical set-up, reinforced by engaging examples, and enable the reader to individually complete a positioning process.

An essential guide for a firm of any size to effectively position itself in the marketplace For an architecture or design firm to survive and prosper in the new economy, it needs to redefine and reinvigorate its position in the marketplace. With dozens of how-to cases, examples, and guidelines, Positioning for Architecture and Design Firms provides the entire menu of tools, plus the inspiration needed, for making the changes required to stay competitive in the design world. Offering strategies for leveraging a firm's strongest assets into the formulation of a successful long-term plan, this book breaks with tradition to introduce the latest concepts specifically developed for building future business opportunities in an unstable economic landscape marked by shifts in competition, technology, and client expectations. With a wealth of information targeting the subject of positioning, readers will learn: Why the aftershocks of the Great Recession are likely to linger, and what you can do about it in relation to your firm's success How the coming generational shift will change the design business What positioning is, and how it needs to be developed to support and implement your strategic vision How your firm can establish a robust identity and operating model The importance of your firm's essential purpose How to turn your marketing department into a true marketing system, transforming it from production mode into an integrated positioning machine Why it is important to engage in advanced research and open innovation initiatives Addressing issues of firm identity, including an understanding of how to create the market positioning desired, Positioning for Architecture and Design Firms shows how a design firm—large or small, new or well established—can position itself to gain greater control over its destiny, and reach loftier levels of achievement. Learn about firm types, and match the right type to a firm's goals Develop and maintain a firm's identity in the marketplace Discover how organizational design and marketing support a chosen firm type

In this breakthrough book, marketing expert Austin McGhie urges readers to set aside their obsession with "branding" and instead focus on the real work of marketing: positioning. In fact, McGhie believes there's no marketing problem or opportunity that can't be framed as a positioning exercise. He argues that brands are a marketplace response, not a marketer's stimulus; if that response from the audience is simple, clear and on strategy, marketers can build a brand. Drawing on his 30-year career working with some of world's best-known brands, including Disney, ESPN, Nike, Google, Visa, Expedia, Best Buy, Microsoft, Anheuser-Busch, Abbott and YouTube, McGhie tackles the strategic essence of positioning and creating differentiated advantage. He deftly weaves the positioning discussion throughout the book with a series of real-life anecdotes to deliver a crisp, clear view of what it means to build a brand. McGhie has written a practical book that will guide and inspire marketers and in turn help them guide and inspire their audiences.

This second edition of Brand Positioning helps marketing and advertising professionals differentiate their product and give it a distinct advantage in an overcrowded global market. It explores the concepts and principles involved in developing sound positioning strategy and discusses practical applications,as well as how to: Secure competitive advantage Use celebrity endorsements to market products Establish brand positioning on the Internet And much more!