Book SummaryPositioning, by Al Ries and Jack Trout

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Positioning

In Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, advertising consultants Al Ries and Jack Trout bring more than 20 years of marketing experience to the concept of positioning—a strategy of framing your product, service, company, or self against your competitors and within your market. The authors primarily focus on how to use positioning to market a product or service, but they also provide some tips on advancing your career by using similar strategies to position yourself as a professional.

Positioning was originally published in 1981 and was the first of several collaborations between the authors, who are credited with popularizing the concept of positioning as a marketing strategy. They’ve written several other books together since then, including Marketing Warfare, Bottom-Up Marketing, and The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, and are regarded as some of the world’s best-known experts on marketing strategy.

In this guide, we’ll describe what Ries and Trout mean by “positioning,” compare it to how others have defined the concept, and explore strategies and techniques you can use in a positioning campaign. We’ll also touch on a few positioning strategies that Ries and Trout caution against. Finally, we’ll discuss how the authors apply the concept of positioning to career development.

What Is Positioning?

According to Ries and Trout, “positioning” is getting your prospective customers to view your product in a certain way relative to competing products and the general market landscape. The “position” of a product is its basic identity in the mind of potential consumers in contrast to other products.

For example, when you think of a Ferrari, you think of an expensive, high-end sports car. When you think of a Corvette, you think of an iconic sports car that’s still expensive, but more affordable than a Ferrari. These mental images are the “positions” that Ferrari and Corvette occupy in your mind.

(Shortform note: Ries and Trout define positioning primarily as an action (what you do to influence the customer’s perceptions), and they use the word to cover the results (the customer’s actual perception of your product) by extension. Other sources reverse this approach, defining positioning primarily as the customer’s actual perception of your product, and secondarily as what you do to influence their perceptions. Marketing consultant Geoffrey Moore views positioning by this definition, insisting that your customers position your product, while you merely try to influence them.)

What Does Positioning Look Like?

Mostly, positioning takes the...

Positioning Summary Preliminary Positioning Strategy

According to Ries and Trout, before you can effectively position your product, you must think through three areas:

1. You must understand your current position.
2. You must identify a desired position that you could realistically occupy.
3. You must select a name that’s compatible with your desired position.

Let’s consider each of these in turn.

1. Understand Your Current Position

How do your prospective customers view your business? Who are your competitors, and how do they compare in your prospective customers’ view? Ries and Trout warn that people outside your company usually don’t view your company or product the way you do. They advise spending money on surveys or other research, if necessary, to answer these questions decisively.

(Shortform note: When discussing positioning, marketing consultant Geoffrey Moore puts particular emphasis on identifying your competitors because customers position your product mostly based on how it compares to alternatives. He draws a distinction between “market alternatives,” which are other products that compete directly with your product in the same market,...

Positioning Summary Positioning Strategy

So, you understand your current position, you have a realistic vision for the position you want, and your name is appropriate for the position you want. Now how do you cement your position as the market leader? Ries and Trout discuss different strategies depending on whether you already are the market leader and just need to stay there, or whether you want to become the market leader.

Strategy for an Established Market Leader

If you are already in a position of market leadership, maybe all you need to do is reinforce your existing position. However, according to Ries and Trout, simply advertising that your product is the best won’t convince anyone.

Instead, Ries and Trout recommend promoting yourself as the originator of the genuine article. Since leaders are typically the first to occupy their respective positions, this claim seems credible, and it implies that competing products are mere imitations, giving people a reason to buy the real thing from you.

(Shortform note: This strategy assumes that the market is not disrupted by technological breakthroughs. However, in some scenarios, being known as the originator of a genuine article that’s now regarded as...

Positioning Summary The Pitfalls of Line Extensions

Ries and Trout use the term “line extension” to refer to new products that you add to an existing product line, under the same name. Within the product line, you distinguish individual products either with descriptions (for example two types of pasta sold under the same brand name) or with other qualifiers (for example, you’ve been selling “Lotion X” for years, and now you roll out a premium version and call it “Lotion X Supreme”)

Ries and Trout observe that line extensions are usually based on the assumption that if you tack a new product onto a successful product line, your success will carry over to the new product. They concede that in the short term, line extensions do provide instant brand recognition and credibility. They also acknowledge that it saves money relative to starting a new marketing campaign for a new product.

However, they generally advise against line extensions, for two reasons: brand dilution and internal competition.

(Shortform note: Other analysts echo these concerns, adding that overuse of line extensions is also driven by the recent trend toward a business structure that rewards...

Positioning Summary Professional Positioning for Career Success

While positioning is most often discussed in the context of marketing a product or company, Ries and Trout say you can use the same principles to advance your career. They even recommend applying the same overarching strategy: Understand your current position, identify your desired position, select a suitable name, and then chart a course from your current position to your desired position.

1. Understand Your Current Position

According to Ries and Trout, first you need to understand your current professional positioning. How do others perceive you in terms of your strengths and weaknesses relative to other candidates or employees?

(Shortform note: According to Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen, the key to understanding how people perceive you is learning how to receive feedback effectively. They advise that to stay open to feedback, you should become aware of certain triggers that might prevent you from listening—for example, a relationship trigger might cause you to ignore advice from someone you dislike, or an identity trigger might make you ignore feedback that criticizes who you are as a person....

Shortform Exercise: Discover Your Niche

According to Ries and Trout, to position yourself as the leader of a market, you typically have to be the first to take that position, and so the key is to find or create an open niche that you can lead.

For this exercise, think of something you want to position as a leader, whether it’s a product or service your company sells or yourself as a professional.