How to define the positioning of a company ?

Want some good news? We are fortunate to partner with Melanie, to present a series of videos aimed at growing your business and providing you with essential keys to success.
Who is Melanie? She is the author of the blog Les Pies Bavardes(www.lespiesbavardes.com). Through her advice and tips, she has been accompanying creative entrepreneurs for 7 years now.

In this first video, Mélanie talks about the positioning of a creative company.

What is the positioning of a company?

What is positioning? It's the image that a company, whether it's a small business or not, wants to give to its customers. If this image does not correspond to the customer's expectations, he will not buy. This is why it is important to choose the right positioning.

You have to see the artisanal market (not the place where you sell your creations, right?) as the fictitious place where supply and demand meet, where the need for artisanal products and the creation of artisanal products meet.

Imagine this artisanal market as a pie divided into several parts. Each slice of this pie represents a different market: there is the market for handcrafted jewelry, the market for handcrafted clothing, the market for handcrafted ceramics, the market for handcrafted cardboard, etc. And for each market, there are, what is called in marketing, segmentations, i.e. divisions that group customers according to common criteria (social class, income level...). Determining these different customer segments allows us to target the right customers.

How to define the positioning?

In this video, Melanie gives you her method for defining these segments. Take a sheet of paper and a pencil and make a table with three columns (If you are lost, don't panic! If you are lost, don't panic! You will find a ready-made example that you can print and post in your workshop so that you always have it in front of you:

• 1st column: popular class / low end / small price or discount price / discount market (factory made).
• 2nd column: middle class / mid-range or mid-range / mid-price / industrial or artisanal manufacturing, mass production.
• 3rd column: upper class / top of the range / top of the range prices / handcrafted and unique pieces.

For each column, we obtain the positioning of a craft product. And we can see that a handmade product is not classified in the low range, but rather in the middle and high range. There are several reasons for this: the cost of the material, the hourly rate, the fixed and variable charges, the URSSAF, the margin... In this case, it is impossible to be competitive with products manufactured in a factory in Asia.

Even if many people want to make crafts accessible to everyone, it is important to understand that this is not possible. Once this is understood, it is essential to adapt your sales pitch to your marketing positioning or risk seeing the customer go to the competition.

What you have to remember is that from a purely factual point of view, from a purely marketing point of view, the products you create are not low-end, they are at least mid-range, even high-end. And yes, you can target the upper classes! Most artisans don't realize this because they underestimate the value of their work. Know that your work is insanely valuable, don't doubt the value and quality of your work!

Use this chart to choose the marketing positioning that best fits your work, i.e. targeting the best customer segment. For example, if you target upper class customers but have low prices, the customer won't understand and will go to another site. If you target the middle class, the customer will arrive on a site with prices that are inaccessible to him and leave elsewhere... It's important to choose the right marketing positioning, to target the right customers and sell a little more easily.

A big thank you to Melanie from Pies Bavardes! And see you in a next video.