Evaluating the Strength of a Positioning Strategy for Healthcare Products

Once you, and/or your agency, have developed a positioning strategy for your new medical or technology product, how do you evaluate its strength? Does it really set your product apart? Will it work beyond the initial launch, once your competitors have a chance to respond? Is it the best position for you? While you can never be certain of a position's strength, there are two steps you can take to increase your confidence.

1. Put your position to the test using simple and comprehensive criteria.

2. Engage in Voice of Customer research.

1. Simple Criteria for Evaluating Positioning 

In our positioning process at DardenLentz, we often find several strategies that we think have promise. They’re all seated in the unique value the product or service delivers to the customer, but each takes a different angle.

To help determine which positions we should move forward to present to our client, we utilize the following criteria to evaluate each strategy’s strength. After our presentation, we suggest our clients use the same criteria to guide their internal evaluation.

• Unique: Is it different from your competitors’ positions?
• Emotional Value: Does it connect with what drives your target customers?
• Credible: Will your customers believe the position, coming from your company?
• True: Will your product deliver to the claims of your position?
• Aspirational/Sustainable: These two go hand in hand. Will the position last beyond your launch period? Can competitors begin assaulting that position and grabbing it for themselves? Are you reaching just a bit above the expected to elevate your position beyond where your customers see you today?
• Memorable: Is your position memorable? Would your customers be able to repeat it back to you?

2. VOC Research

Once you determine that a strategy meets the criteria above, engage in Voice of Customer research—research that elicits a response directly from your customer. There are a lot of ways to approach VOC research, and some of them fall into the guerilla category, enabling you to get feedback on a budget.

However, there’s a science to getting meaningful responses, so, no matter what method you choose, ask your agency to write the questions or, better yet, conduct the interviews. This should help you avoid the most common error in this sort of research: asking your customer if they “like” the positioning. You want to know if the position connects with what drives customers, not if they “like it.” Liking it is meaningless.

For additional methods that can help your positioning—and your product launch overall—download our Step-by-Step Guide to Medical Product Launches. 

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.