Positioning is owning a space in your customer’s mind. In their book Positioning, Al Ries and Jack Trout say, “...positioning is not what you do to a product. Positioning is what you do to the mind of the prospect. That is, you position the product in the mind of the prospect.”

To keep things simple, if your competitor opens up early, you can challenge their position by staying open late. Suppose your competitor offers better service at their location. In that case, you can position your company as the option with a broader reach with 4 locations.

But strict, one-track Positioning is limited. Or it is just a step in the right direction. Building various memory structures--associations you attach to your product--might lead to a more robust result.

As Byron Sharp says in How Brands Grow, “Marketers need to understand the memory structures that have already been built for their brand. They need to use these and ensure their advertising refreshes these structures. Then they need to research what other memory structures might be useful to the brand (i.e., factors driving purchase in the category) and then work to build these...Coke is a great example. Today Coke is associated with a variety of memories: the beach and Coke, nightclubs and Coke, pizza and Coke, the Coke bottle, Coke Red, etc.”

For marketing success, you must find as many memory structures or positions that occupy your customer’s minds when ready to purchase. Then for creative success, find various ways to tap into these memory structures, which leads to refreshing the prospects’ minds.

The books Positioning and How Brands Grow discuss these more clearly than I ever could. As a result, they’ll always have a standing recommendation from me.

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