Form over function is not always the goal. While someone might enjoy wearing stilettos to a once-in-a-lifetime red carpet event, they’ll find those same shoes impractical on a day-to-day basis. Consumers favor beautiful products, yes, but many of their purchases are based on longer-term functionality, practicality, and reliability. Brands can seize this opportunity by using functional positioning, marketing their products as the most functional and practical solutions available.
What is functional positioning?
Functional positioning is a strategy for marketing your product or service by highlighting its practical benefits. Brands that employ a functional positioning strategy typically focus on the product’s tangible characteristics.
Positioning, broadly, is a marketing strategy for shaping how a target audience views a brand or product compared to its competitors. Many brand positioning strategies involve identifying and conveying the distinct benefits and characteristics that set your brand apart. Effective positioning creates an identity and reputation that resonates with your target customers. The goal of positioning is to influence purchase decisions and develop brand loyalty through clear, compelling marketing that demonstrates a brand’s ability to align with the values of the target market while offering practical products with measurable benefits.
You can implement a functional positioning strategy as part of both product positioning and brand positioning. Product positioning with a functional positioning strategy communicates the specific solutions a product offers. Brand positioning, meanwhile, helps brands define their unique identity to communicate their value proposition. The goal of brand positioning with a functional positioning strategy is to convey to consumers why your brand can uniquely and practically meet their needs.
Why do brands use functional positioning?
Brands use functional positioning to differentiate themselves from their competition and build customer loyalty and trust. By creating a strong brand identity that emphasises function, you can become shoppers’ go-to brand for your product category.
Decision fatigue is real for both in-store and ecommerce shoppers. Think about the amount of options for something as simple as shampoo—there are dozens of brands to choose from at the store, and the options are endless if shopping online. Functional positioning can make the decision-making process for purchasing easier for customers, especially in saturated industries where it can be helpful for customers to clearly understand how a specific brand’s product will serve them best.
Best practices for using functional positioning
- Conduct market research
- Demonstrate functional benefits
- Share proof to back up your claims
- Leverage customer feedback
- Take a balanced approach
- Communicate your functional positioning strategy to key stakeholders
Here are some best practices to keep in mind if you’re pursuing a functional positioning strategy:
Conduct market research
How you position your product may depend on your target audience’s practical needs and the current competitive landscape. Conducting market research can help you understand more about each of these elements and give you insights into how to pitch your product and which benefits to highlight. You can collect data through focus groups, surveys, and social listening tools to get a complete picture.
For example, market research may reveal that customers of your new line of watches are more interested in your precision timing technology (a functional benefit) than the vegan leather straps (which don’t affect how the product functions). You may also learn that your most direct competitors are differentiating their products primarily on design. You can then use this information to guide your functional positioning messaging, highlighting the timekeeping tech.
Demonstrate functional benefits
The key to functional positioning is to create marketing messages that highlight your product’s unique features and superior functionality. Honestly communicate the practical attributes that make your product useful. Demonstrate your product in action through things like how-to videos or tutorials. Providing in-depth demonstrations of how your product works can showcase its functional qualities, allowing customers to see firsthand how it can positively impact their lives.
Share proof to back up your claims
Build credibility in your functional marketing campaign by sharing proof to support your claims. While it might be tempting to highlight the general features of your product in bold claims, customers can see through dubious marketing messages. Providing evidence that your product can deliver on its promises is an important reassurance to potential customers.
Use data such as case studies to validate your product’s benefits. One of the most straightforward ways to prove your marketing claims is to quantify results in areas such as time savings, cost savings, increased productivity, overall product quality, or longevity. Quantitative data can help customers visualize the specific, measurable impact your product can make in their lives. For example, if you’re marketing a budgeting tool, a quantifiable metric might be “Users increase their savings an average of 17% year over year.”
Leverage customer feedback
Customer testimonials, interviews, and reviews are valuable tools for showcasing your product’s benefits. Share real stories from prior customers to demonstrate the value of your brand from their perspective. Whenever possible, explain the original challenges they faced, how your product solved them, and the results that followed. Using authentic customer feedback builds credibility and provides relatable proof that your product will perform as advertised.
Take a balanced approach
A purely functional positioning approach can leave your brand open to the risk of commoditization, where products become indistinguishable from competing products, and price is the primary differentiating factor. If other brands take a similar functional positioning approach, it can become difficult to gain a competitive advantage and brand apart based on its functional qualities or characteristics.
To account for this, balance your functional positioning approach with marketing strategies that tap into the emotional and aspirational factors influencing a consumer’s purchase decision. This can give consumers a reason to feel inspired and build a deeper connection with your brand, creating long-term brand loyalty.
Communicate your functional positioning strategy to key stakeholders
Positioning isn’t just relevant to a company’s marketing department. Create a positioning statement that highlights your functional positioning strategy and share it with key stakeholders. A positioning statement is a brief description, usually around three to five sentences, that clearly defines your product, the intended target audience, and the brand’s value proposition relative to competitors.
A compelling positioning statement can help your entire company align with your positioning strategy and help solidify your identity. To gain buy-in from your product development team, emphasize how the functional positioning aligns with customer needs and market demands. Involve technical teams so you’re accurately communicating how the more technical aspects of the product are involved in delivering the advertised benefits.
How To Find Your Niche Market + 5 Examples to Inspire You
Effective functional positioning example
Samantha Kent, chief growth officer of family-run LaDove, started a pure beauty line, The Cleanest Lab, after her younger sister Ashley’s leukemia diagnosis. The Cleanest Lab is a hair care and skin care line that crafts products for people with sensitivities or serious health concerns.
The Cleanest Lab evaluates its ingredients around the health concerns of customers. “A lot of preservatives get a bad rep. However, it’s more dangerous to somebody with a disease to have a potential exposure to a bacteria than an exposure to that preservative,” Samantha says on an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast.
Functional positioning is a natural pillar of the Cleanest Lab marketing strategy because the brand genuinely revolves around being the healthiest option for a target audience. “The special part about the Cleanest Lab is the fact that it is specially formulated for people with extra sensitivity, and you’re selecting ingredients and formulations in a thoughtful way,” Samantha says.
Functional marketing and a clear goal allowed Samantha to gain a competitive edge in an already crowded market. “There is always space,” she says. “Just when you think everything is there, somebody comes up with something that pushes the boundaries and gets everybody excited again.” The Cleanest Labs markets its formulations to a hyper-specific audience in need of specific functional benefits. The hair care and skin care industries are crowded markets, but even in a saturated marketplace, The Cleanest Labs makes it clear to its target customers why its products are an easy choice.
Functional positioning FAQ
How do you choose the right brand positioning strategy?
Brand positioning is an all-encompassing term for marketing strategies that establish a unique identity for your brand and make it stand out from your competition. It’s a strategic process with no one-size-fits-all approach. There are many brand positioning strategies (from price positioning and emotional positioning to convenience-based positioning and functional positioning). Using different strategies for brand positioning in different scenarios will increase the likelihood of connecting with customers and improving brand awareness over competing brands.
What are functional brand positioning benefits?
Functional brand positioning is a compelling strategy for gaining consumer attention by clearly demonstrating how a brand can solve a problem or make life easier. It also builds customer loyalty through its focus on practical qualities. Finally, by demonstrating your product’s unique ability to solve your target audience’s concerns, functional positioning can give you a competitive advantage, helping you stand out in a crowded marketplace.
What is an example of symbolic positioning?
Symbolic positioning is a marketing and branding strategy that focuses on the emotional and aspirational associations that consumers have with a product. Rather than emphasizing functional attributes, symbolic positioning typically involves imagery, storytelling, or cultural values to resonate with customers on a personal level.
