For the sake of this post, let’s assume that you’ve completed that process, and now you need to position your product to connect with your customer personae and their drivers. This is best accomplished with a two-step process:
1) First determine your Unique Value Proposition, and
2) Then determine how to position that value to connect with what your customer needs or wants.
What’s the difference between UVP and Positioning?
As with a lot of marketing terms, UVP and positioning are used differently by different organizations—and, sometimes, they are incorrectly viewed as interchangeable. They’re not. Developed correctly, they work hand in glove to help you establish a unique brand for your medical or technology product.
For clarity here, we define a unique value proposition as a description of what differentiates your product from your competitors’ products and answers the question: what can your product do for your customer that no one else can?
Whereas, your positioning statement captures the space you want to own in your customer’s mind, based on the unique value that you can offer.
| UVP is what YOU want to say about your product, and the Positioning is what the product can mean to your CUSTOMER |
One way to think of it is that the UVP is what YOU want to say about your product, and the positioning is what the product can mean to your CUSTOMER.
A classic example from the consumer world
Fine in theory, but what does the difference between them look like? Let’s use a classic positioning example from the marketing wars between German luxury sedans a few decades ago.
You’re BMW. Mercedes, at the time, owns the position of “prestigious, comfortable luxury sedans.” You know that your customer is a bit younger than the Mercedes customer. Your customer is less about comfort and more about the drive. So, you look at your product line and its advantages and capture the unique value it brings your customers.
UVP:
The BMW offers perfect weight distribution, rapid acceleration and more horsepower than other luxury sedans, making it faster and more agile than its competitors.
Next, you look at how to position that value to engage your customer emotionally.
Positioning:
A luxury sedan that’s fun to drive: a sports sedan.
Ah, your younger customers like that. They don’t have to choose between a sports car and a sedan. Later, your marketing team creates a tagline that brings the positioning to life.
Tagline.
BMW: The ultimate driving machine
Obviously, we’ve oversimplified this process, but you get the idea of the roles that UVP, positioning, and taglines play in a product’s brand identity.
Medical and Technology Positioning May Be More Complex
With technology and medical products, getting to the UVP can be a more complex process—especially if your product is less unique than you’d like it to be—or if you don’t yet have the clinical evidence to support the claims that would make it unique.
Workshops Can Produce Solid UVPs and Unite Organizations
For these complex challenges, we've found that workshops are a great tool for UVP development. A workshop can tap your best minds and capture the energy of a well-guided group-think.
| We've found that workshops are a great tool for UVP development. A workshop can tap your best minds and capture the energy of well-guided group-think. |
The participants should be a cross-functional team: representatives from product marketing, sales and/or distribution, and customer service/clinical support. If you market your products globally, have representatives from major regions.
Do NOT just get everyone in a room and say, “So what’s our UVP?” Create exercises that use the group dynamic to build from your personae to emotional drivers, then to competitive analysis, and finally to unique values. Make it fun and engaging. Use combinations of role playing, small group exercises, individual tasks and team competitions. Your workshop's output is directly related to how engaged your team remains from start to finish.
Creating a workshop can be demanding. Ask your agency if they have experience with this technique and consider having them create and facilitate the workshop. You may also find that your team responds better to an external leader. Plus, with an external leader, you have an opportunity to participate–rather than focus on leading the group.
At the end of the workshop, you should have the building blocks that you, or your agency, can use to create a well-honed UVP. From there, your agency will dig deeper to get to that more emotional connection: what does that UVP mean to your customer? That will determine your positioning.
One of the best dividends your workshop will pay is that when you and/or your agency present the position to your team, it will feel familiar to them because they helped build the UVP foundation. Alignment will come easier, and the sales team is more likely to integrate the positioning into their customer conversations—rather than just feature sell.
For additional methods that can help your positioning—and your product launch overall—download our Step-by-Step Guide to Add Power to Medical Product Launches.
For simple criteria to evaluate your position's strength, read this brief blog post.
Julia Darden is the Branding Strategist for DardenLentz, a B2B Marketing and Branding Agency focused on healthcare and technology, and she is the firm's managing partner. Julia is passionate about building memorable brands that connect emotionally with customers. She has successfully managed major creative and branding projects for leaders in the technology, diagnostics, medical device and medical informatics industries.