Undoubtedly, your target audience’s age, experience, gender, and culture significantly impact how they react to your brand. A brand’s positioning can have a colorful impact on the emotional message being communicated.
And that’s why every entrepreneur who wants to build a successful business must understand how to position their brand, so it instantly appeals to their target customers. Properly positioning your company will go a long way in determining whether it becomes a household name or just another business struggling to survive in a crowded industry.
So, to help you position your business, we tested a few brand positioning principles to see how customers react to companies that adopt a modern vs. classic brand position.
Why is this Positioning Survey Important?
This study aimed to determine which brands customers were drawn to and how this varied based on their demographics.
The information we obtained will assist business owners, whether they manage a small, medium, or a large corporation, make rapid, well-informed branding decisions that will correctly position their business.
However, to achieve the survey’s objectives, we asked people in the United States whether they would rather work with a well-known or trusted business or one that was modern and innovative.
Why this Question?
It’s critical to understand that selecting your company’s tone is one of the most significant and defining branding decisions you’ll make when starting or rebranding your company.
Selecting the proper tone is critical because it allows entrepreneurs, product managers, and brand executives to determine their company’s destiny.
Consider what the market could have looked like today if:
- Apple had entered the market as Executex
- Zappos was still known as Shoestore
- Bezos didn’t rename Cadabra to Amazon.
- Phil Knight hadn’t renamed Blue Ribbon Sports to Nike
- Jacob Loose chose a more appealing name in place of Hydrox
- Ayds diet candy was quickly rebranded
Your brand’s tone influences your company’s overall personality and consumers’ perception of your brand. Your company’s tone is so vital to your positioning and branding that you can’t afford to neglect it while developing your name strategy.
Although there are many brand tones, most of them lie somewhere between ‘historied and trusted’ and ‘modern and innovative’ tones.
Take a quick look at some popular historied or classic companies:
- Warby Parker
- Blackstone
- Liberty Mutual
- IBM
Here are some well-known modern and innovative brands:
- Urban Decay
- Robinhood
- Accenture
- Apple
Courtesy: Squadhelp.com
Our survey was specifically designed to identify which audience demographics are drawn to modern brands and which ones are drawn to historied companies. And we did this because deciding whether to go modern or traditional is one of the most critical considerations every company must make when developing its brand identity.
Here’s What the Survey Uncovered about Positioning
Although the survey’s results weren’t earth-shattering, the responses we received were unexpected and refreshing. Here’s a summary of what we learned from the 301 people that took part:
- People aged 25 to 34 are drawn to modern and innovative businesses. More than half of those surveyed favored modern and trendy brands over established and trustworthy ones.
Courtesy: Squadhelp
- People between the ages of 35 and 45 chose modern and innovative brands over historied and trusted ones. However, this group was evenly split between the two options.
Courtesy: Squadhelp
- Historied and trusted brands appealed more to people aged 45–54 and 55–65.
Courtesy: Squadhelp
- People between the ages of 55 and 65 were strongly drawn to historied and trusted companies.
Courtesy: Squadhelp
- According to the survey’s results, men have little to no preference for either modern or historied brands.
Courtesy: Squadhelp
- Women, on the other hand, choose historied and trusted brands over new and innovative ones.
Courtesy: Squadhelp
- Among the 301 persons we surveyed, 153 chose historied and trusted businesses, while 148 selected modern and innovative brands. From the survey, it’s now easy to say that companies can adopt any position they choose as long as it aligns with their target audience.
Courtesy: Squadhelp
What Does This Imply for You?
The survey showed that most young people are interested in new, modern, creative, and innovative brands. So, if you want to appeal to a younger demographic, make sure your company has a distinct, modern, and innovative brand identity.
But, suppose your target audience are Baby Boomers and older Gen Xers. In that case, you should make sure your company’s positioning exudes a classic, traditional, and trusted identity since customers between the ages of 45 – 65 are more open to classic companies.
The study shows that if an entrepreneur wants to position their business properly, they shouldn’t only focus on their products but also pay close attention to the tone of their brand.
And one of the most effective ways to combine your product, audience, and business is to use a solid brand name, and one of the fastest ways of getting a great brand name is by using a powerful business name generator.
Here’s an example of a Brand That’s Well-Positioned
Hulu is a great example of a brand that is well-positioned. The company entered the market with a distinct brand name that fully embraces a ‘modern and innovative’ brand tone. And with almost 40 million subscribers, it’s obvious that the name has paid off.
Hulu is thriving now because its tone is ideal for the company and its target demographic. Hulu’s target audience consists of Gen Z, Millennials, and even Gen Xers, and as our research indicated, this group enjoys modern and innovative businesses.
How well-positioned is your brand for your audience?
This guest post at The Marketing Sage is from Grant Polachek. He is the Head of Branding at Inc 500 company Squadhelp.com, the world’s #1 naming platform, with 30,000+ customers from early-stage startups across the globe to the largest corporations including Nestle, Philips, Hilton, Pepsi, and AutoNation.
You can set up a time to chat with me about your marketing challenges using my calendar. Email me jeffslater@themarketingsage.com Call me. 919 720 0995. The conversation is free, and we can explore if working together makes sense. Watch a short video about working with me.
Photo by David Pisnoy on Unsplash
