A Guide to Brand Positioning Mapping

Staring at a crowded market can feel overwhelming. Brand positioning mapping is the strategic tool that cuts through the noise. It’s essentially a visual GPS for your brand, plotting where you stand against competitors based on what your customers actually think and feel. Think of it as a strategic blueprint for survival and growth.

Finding Your Place: What Is Brand Positioning and Why Does It Matter?

Brand positioning is the deliberate act of defining how you want your brand to show up in the minds of your audience, especially relative to your competition. It's the specific piece of space you own in their consciousness. A brand positioning map (or perceptual map) is the tool that makes this abstract idea tangible and actionable.

This visual clarity is everything. It shifts your strategy from one based on internal wishful thinking to a reflection of what’s really happening in the market. By plotting your brand on a simple two-axis grid, you can immediately spot a few critical things:

• Market Gaps: Uncontested areas where customer needs aren't being met. This is often where the gold is buried.
• Competitive Clusters: Overcrowded spaces where standing out is both difficult and expensive.
• Perception vs. Reality: The often-surprising gap between how you see your brand and how your customers actually perceive it.

The Strategic Value of a Clear Position

The idea of carving out a specific mental space for a brand isn't new. Advertising pioneer David Ogilvy showed its power back in the 1950s. His campaigns positioned Dove as a gentle toilet bar for women with dry skin and Saab as the definitive car for brutal Norwegian winters. These weren’t just clever brand slogans; they were strategic choices that built decades of brand identity by owning a single, powerful idea in the consumer's mind.

A great brand position gives you a defensible territory. It’s not just about being different; it’s about being different in a way that your ideal customer values, making your brand the only logical choice for them.

It's one thing to talk about this in theory, but seeing how companies execute these strategic shifts in the real world is incredibly enlightening.

Ultimately, a well-defined position, guided by a clear map, becomes your North Star. It informs everything from product development and messaging to your entire business strategy, ensuring your brand and technology intersect to build a modern, resilient company.

Building a Foundation on Real-World Data

A map built on guesswork isn't just useless; it's a direct route to a flawed brand strategy. The entire point of brand positioning mapping is to reflect reality. That means grounding every decision in an unvarnished, objective picture of your market.

This process kicks off with an honest look at your competitive landscape and, crucially, what’s going on in your customer’s mind. This isn’t just about listing the obvious players. Your true competitors are anyone your customers might choose instead of you. This demands a much broader perspective than most businesses take.

Identifying Your Real Competitors

Thinking beyond your direct rivals is absolutely critical. If you run a SaaS project management tool, your competition isn't just other PM software. It's spreadsheets. It's shared documents. It's even dedicated chat channels being used to manage tasks. These indirect alternatives are a goldmine for understanding customer behaviour and seeing what needs aren't being met.

Your research needs to cover three main bases:

• Direct Competitors: Brands offering a very similar solution to the same crowd (think Monzo vs. Revolut).
• Indirect Competitors: Businesses solving the same core problem, but with a different approach (like a meal-kit service vs. a local takeaway).
• Emerging Disruptors: Those new startups or tech platforms challenging the old way of doing things, often with a completely novel business model or feature.

Uncovering Customer Perceptions

Once you have a clear picture of who you’re up against, the next job is to understand what actually drives people to buy. This is where you have to stop guessing and start listening. Relying on what you think your customers value is the single biggest mistake you can make.

The goal here isn’t to validate what you already believe. It's to find the raw, unfiltered truth of how your brand and its competitors are really seen in the wild. This truth, no matter how uncomfortable, is your most valuable strategic asset.

To get this data, a mixed-method approach always works best:

1. Targeted Surveys: Use scaled questions ("On a scale of 1-10, how innovative is Brand X?") to collect hard numbers on key attributes across multiple brands. This is fantastic for direct, apples-to-apples comparisons.
2. One-on-One Interviews: This is where you get the 'why'. Go deeper with qualitative, open-ended questions. "Walk me through the last time you switched providers. What was the tipping point?" These stories reveal the human motivations behind the data.
3. Social Listening & Review Mining: Scour online conversations, forum threads, and review sites. What words do customers use over and over? What are their biggest frustrations and what makes them genuinely happy? This gives you candid, unprompted feedback straight from the source.

Finally, pair all this external research with an honest internal look in the mirror. Forget the marketing spiel for a moment and define your brand's actual, provable strengths. What can you genuinely, hand-on-heart, claim to be the best at? Only when you combine this internal truth with external perception can your brand positioning mapping process lead to real brand strategic clarity.

Choosing Axes That Reveal Strategic Opportunities

Let's get one thing straight. The real power of a brand positioning map isn’t the dots scattered across the page—it’s the axes. The variables you plot are what separate a generic classroom exercise from a genuine strategic tool. Get this right, and you'll uncover gold. Get it wrong, and you're just drawing charts. This is probably the most critical decision you'll make in the whole process.

Most teams default to the old, comfortable standby: Price vs. Quality. It’s simple, sure. But nine times out of ten, it’s a strategic dead end. In today's markets, especially in complex spaces like tech and B2B services, value is far more nuanced. Sticking to that basic model can blind you to the real forces shaping customer decisions.

Your job is to pinpoint the two attributes that actually define competitive advantage in your world. That means digging deeper to find the dimensions that reflect how your customers truly make choices.

Moving Beyond Price vs Quality

How do you find better axes? Start by thinking about the fundamental tensions in your industry. What are the key trade-offs that businesses and customers are forced to make? That’s where the interesting stories are.

For a SaaS company, for example, a much more revealing map might emerge from plotting:

• Specialist vs. Generalist: Does your tool solve one niche problem exceptionally well, or is it a broad, all-in-one platform?
• High-Touch vs. Fully Automated: Is your core value in personalised onboarding and human support, or a seamless, self-service experience?

A fintech business could explore completely different dynamics:

• Community-Driven vs. Performance-Focused: Is your appeal built around a user community and shared values, or is it all about pure financial performance and returns?
• Integrated Ecosystem vs. Standalone Product: Does your service plug into a wide array of other tools, or does it operate as a self-contained, proprietary system?

The best axes create a map where brands are scattered, not clumped. If all your competitors are jammed into one quadrant, your axes are likely too generic. You're looking for dimensions that reveal the true strategic landscape, warts and all.

A Framework for Brainstorming Your Axes

Once you have a few ideas, you need to validate them. It's not enough for an axis to sound clever; it has to be relevant to customers and central to the business. This isn't a task for an isolated marketing team. You need to pull in people from across the whole business.

Get your product, sales, and customer support leads in a room (or on a call). Then, start asking the right questions:

1. What criteria pop up constantly in sales calls? Listen for the exact words customers use when comparing you to the competition.
2. What features do our most loyal customers rave about? Check your usage data and feedback. What creates genuine stickiness?
3. What's the main reason we lose a deal to a competitor? This often points directly to a key differentiating axis.
4. Is this a real deciding factor? Would a customer realistically choose one brand over another solely based on this dimension?

By digging into these practical questions, you move away from abstract ideas and toward concrete, customer-centric attributes. This groundwork ensures your brand positioning mapping exercise is rooted in the factors that actually drive growth, helping you find and own a space that truly matters.

Plotting Your Position in the Competitive Landscape

The prep work is done. You've defined your axes and gathered your research. Now for the fun part: turning all that abstract data into a real, visual tool. This is where you put dots on a grid, bringing your brand positioning mapping exercise to life. Think of it less like an art class and more like a disciplined science experiment.

The process is all about translating your data—quantitative survey scores, qualitative feedback, all of it—into a specific coordinate for each brand on the map. Your brand, and every single competitor, gets its own spot. The real challenge? You have to let the data lead the way and actively fight the urge to place things where you think they should be.

Your first draft doesn't need to be a polished masterpiece. Seriously. A quick sketch on a whiteboard can be an incredibly powerful way to get everyone on the same page. The aim is to create an honest, clear picture of the current market, straight from your customers' perspective.

Translating Data to the Grid

An accurate map hinges on a systematic approach. You're not just guessing where a competitor lands; you're placing them based on solid evidence. For instance, if your axes are 'High-Touch vs. Self-Service' and 'Specialist vs. Generalist', you need a clear score for each brand on both of those scales.

This might look like:

• Averaging out survey scores for a direct, numbers-based comparison.
• Turning qualitative feedback into numbers (e.g., counting how many times customers mentioned "great support" versus "hard to get help").
• Using proxy metrics, like the number of features a brand offers (pushing it toward 'Generalist') or their customer-to-support-staff ratio (an indicator of 'High-Touch').

This visual guide breaks down the core process beautifully, showing how you move from defining the axes to plotting competitors and, finally, finding your own brand's spot.

It simplifies what can feel like a complex task into a clear sequence that any team can pick up and run with to get their first map built.

Maintaining Objectivity in a Subjective World

The single biggest trap you can fall into at this stage is confirmation bias. It's so tempting to nudge your brand’s dot into that perfect, empty corner of the map or to caricature a competitor based on office gossip. You have to resist.

A brand positioning map built on internal opinion is just a mirror reflecting your own assumptions. A map built on customer data is a window into the market's reality. Only one of these is a useful strategic tool.

To keep everyone honest, appoint a "data guardian" for your mapping session. This person’s only job is to constantly challenge the team by asking, "What data supports that placement?" This one simple question forces everyone to back up their moves with evidence, not just anecdotes.

Perceptual maps are a fantastic way to decode how customers really feel and where competitors are truly strong. Take the toothpaste market. Plotting brands on axes like 'germ protection', 'health', 'value for money', and 'doctor recommendation' quickly reveals how each one has carved out its own mental space. A brand that scores high on 'health' might be weaker on 'value,' showing the strategic trade-offs they’ve made to stand out.

Ultimately, you're trying to create something that’s both brutally honest and strategically powerful. This map sets the stage for the most important part of the whole exercise: analysing it to find your path forward.

How to Find Your Strategic Sweet Spot on the Map

So, you’ve done the hard work. Your map is plotted, the dots are on the grid, and you’re looking at a visual representation of your market. Now what? This is the moment where all that research crystallises. A completed brand positioning mapping exercise isn't just a report to file away; think of it as a compass for your next big move.

Reading your map is about spotting two critical things: danger zones and golden opportunities. Danger zones are usually obvious—just look for the tight clusters. These are the overcrowded corners of the market where everyone is scrapping over the same customers. It’s a brutal fight, often leading to a race to the bottom on price or a features war nobody can win. If you see your brand stuck in one of these dogpiles, it’s a flashing red light that something needs to change.

Uncovering Blue Oceans and Strategic Gaps

The real magic happens when you start to notice the empty spaces. These are your ‘blue oceans’—the quiet, uncontested parts of the map. These gaps point to unmet customer needs, highlighting a mix of attributes that people value but that no one is currently delivering.

This is where you have to start asking some tough questions:

• Is anyone playing in this space? If not, you need to understand why. Is it a genuine, untapped opportunity, or is it empty for a reason (i.e., there’s no real market there)?
• Could we actually own this position? Be honest. Does this potential spot align with your brand’s core strengths, values, and what you’re genuinely good at?
• What would it take to get there? This is about logistics. What changes would you need to make to your product, your messaging, or even your entire strategy to claim that space?

The most powerful insights from a positioning map aren’t just about where you are, but where you could be. It gives you permission to think beyond the current competitive set and imagine a new reality for your brand.

Evaluating your current position requires brutal honesty. Are you really where you thought you were? And more importantly, is that spot defensible, or are you just one new competitor away from being squeezed out?

Turning Insights into Actionable Strategy

Your map should directly fuel your next strategic decisions. Once you’ve finished the analysis, you’ll likely find yourself heading down one of three paths:

1. Reinforce: If your brand already holds a strong, unique, and valuable position, your job is simple: double down. Fortify that territory. Amplify the messaging and product features that got you there in the first place.
2. Reposition: If you’re stuck in a crowded cluster or a weak position, the map gives you a clear mandate to make a move. This could be a gradual pivot over time or a full-blown rebrand to shift into a more desirable, open space on the grid.
3. Innovate: Spotted a compelling gap that your current brand just can’t fill? This could be the perfect business case for launching a new product, a new service, or even a sub-brand designed specifically to capture that opportunity.

Big organisational shifts, like mergers and acquisitions, often force this kind of re-evaluation. Read one of our case studies on ContentCal's acquisition with Adobe.

A Few Frequently Asked Questions About Brand Positioning

Even with a clear process, a few practical questions always pop up once you get down to the business of building your own map. This section is a quick reference guide to tackle the most common queries we hear, helping you use this strategic tool with real confidence.

How often should I actually update my map?

Think of your positioning map as a living document, not a one-and-done project. At a minimum, we recommend a full refresh annually, or whenever there's a major shake-up in the market. This could be a big new competitor landing, a merger changing the game, or a noticeable shift in what your customers want.

If you’re in a fast-moving sector like tech or SaaS, a lighter 'pulse check' every six months is a smart move. It keeps your strategy grounded in what’s happening now, not last year's news.

What's the biggest mistake people make with these?

The most critical, and sadly common, error is relying on internal assumptions instead of genuine customer data. When a team sits in a room and plots where they think they are, or where they want to be, the map becomes an exercise in wishful thinking. Its strategic value evaporates on the spot.

The entire point of a positioning map is to reflect the objective reality of the market. Skipping proper customer research guarantees a flawed tool and, down the line, some very expensive and misguided decisions.

Is this really useful for a startup?

Absolutely. In fact, you could argue it’s even more crucial for a startup. Mapping forces a disciplined, honest look at the competitive landscape and helps you pinpoint a viable niche you can own right from day one. When resources are tight, that kind of clarity is priceless.

Instead of burning a limited budget trying to compete head-on with established giants, a startup can use a map to:

• Spot underserved customer segments that the big players are ignoring.
• Pinpoint a unique value proposition that truly clicks with a specific audience.
• Build a data-backed story for your market entry, which is invaluable for convincing investors and winning over those first crucial customers.

This kind of strategic thinking is fundamental, whether you're a team of two or two thousand. It's about finding your unique voice and value—a core idea we explored when discussing the lessons from building an agency around a community. The map provides the blueprint for that community to form around. It's an essential first move for any founder serious about their vision.