Positioning Guide #13

In business to business marketing, a brand’s unique brand benefit should be economic.

It’s amazing how many business to business marketers obfuscate the value that they deliver to their target customers.  Businesses are economically motivated; they want to make money.  Even not-for-profit enterprises want to operate as efficiently as possible.  Thus, business to business marketers need to tell their target business customers how their unique brand benefit will increase the customer’s revenue and/or decrease their costs. 

Despite the simplicity of economic appeal in business to business marketing, business to business marketers often speak obtusely about the value they are delivering.  A currently popular phrase is “solutions provider”. A quick Google search will show 5.5 million matches for the phrase “solutions provider.”  The business customer will dismiss such appeals without even remembering them because the phrase is both vague and empty.  Solutions to what?  It doesn’t answer how the marketer is going to make the customer’s business more profitable.

Vague statements of providing value are also common in business to business marketing.  A Google search on the phrase “we deliver value” yields 43,500 hits.  However, few of these marketers are able to quantify in dollar amount the value that they deliver to their customers.  A good unique brand benefit for business to business marketers say that the marketer is going to saving the customer money and/or help the customer generate more revenue.  The challenge of business to business brand positioning is to express this brand benefit in a unique way.

Positioning Guide 12

Product benefits often serve as benefit supports for a brand benefit.

Marketers in all product categories fall in love with their products.  As a result of this love of product, they want to talk about their products more than end-users want to hear about their products.  And often they forget to tie the product benefits to the brand benefit.

As an example, Ford stylists and marketers expected the second generation of Tarus to be a success because of the oval styling.  They proudly said that the side sculpting of the vehicle when viewed directly from the side with overhead lighting produced an oval shadow on the side.  How many consumers noticed?  Not enough to make the model a marketplace success.

One of my favorite example brands is Pantene Pro V shampoo.  The target customers are women, and what do women want out of a shampoo?  Beautiful shiny hair.  Why do women want beautiful shiny hair?  So that they’ll get hugs and kisses from attractive people.  Hugs and kisses from attractive people (social want/need) is the root motivating benefit for this product category.  Pantene Pro V is vitamin enriched which contributes to healthy hair.  If Pantene Pro V stopped at healthy hair, they would just be stating a product benefit and healthy hair doesn’t directly lead to hugs and kisses from attractive people.  So Pantene Pro V goes one step further with the theme-line, “For hair so healthy it shines.”  An example commercial for this brand may be found on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxswBtKkKUE

If you’ve read my biography on the blog home page, you saw that I spent many years doing marketing in the tire category.  One of the best product launches that I saw in my career was for a consumer passenger tire name the Michelin HydroEdge (following the game rule of good names are suggestive of use or benefit).  At that time, the unique brand benefit of the Michelin brand was security of the family (social want/need)/  Michelin trains its salespeople in feature / advantage / benefit selling.  The benefit, however, is a product benefit, not a brand benefit.  Nevertheless, marketing people can focus on those product benefits which support the brand benefit of security. Here are a couple of examples of product benefits of the Michelin HydroEdge that support the unique brand benefit of security:

Moving from the consumer product category to the business-to-business product category, the Michelin X One commercial truck tire has product features/advantages/ benefits that directly support an economic brand benefit of increasing the end-user’s revenue.  In some trucking vocations, such as bulk hauling, vehicles reach their weight limit before the vehicle is full.  If the tires and wheels weigh less, then the operator can carry more cargo thereby increasing revenue.  To demonstrate the weight savings of the Michelin X One over a set of dual tires in tractor and trailer application, the marketing people have developed the chart below.

Note that this example stops with the product benefit of weight savings.  Target end-users will be forced to make the translation of weight savings > carry more cargo > make more money.  The impact of this chart would be increased if some dollar amounts reflecting “make more money” were included.  While it would be best to have dollar amounts which could be generalized to all target end-users, a testimonial could serve the same purpose.

Positioning Guide #11

While a brand should have one, and only one, unique brand benefit, it may have many benefit supports.

Benefit supports to some advertising people are called “permissions to believe.”  They are specifics to which marketers can point to make their claim of a brand benefit believable to target end-users.  They may be product features/advantages/benefits, endorsements, testimonials … anything that makes your unique brand benefit believable to your target customers.  Recall from Positioning Guide #7 that you should constrain yourself to only one unique brand benefit; however, you can list as many benefit supports as you wish.

Most marketers find it difficult to constrain themselves to one unique brand benefit.  If something is good, they want to claim it for their brand.  Be disciplined and focus on only one unique brand benefit.  Shift the urge to claim more than one unique brand benefit to your benefit supports and develop compelling supports that make your unique brand benefit believable to your target customers.

Positioning Guide #10

In consumer marketing, a brand with unique brand benefit which satisfies a higher order want/need in Maslow’s hierarchy will have fewer competitive substitutes than a brand with a unique brand benefit which satisfies a lower order want/need.

Returning to the sports drink category to illustrate this guide, all sports drinks promise to quench thirst.  This satisfaction of thirst is a basic physiological want/need.  There are many competitive substitutes which could also quench thirst: water, juice, beer, etc.  A brand position which promises to satisfy a lower order want/need will find itself open to many competitive substitutes.

Some sports drinks promise to provide extra energy.  While just providing energy is the satisfaction of a physiological want/need, providing extra energy is probably the satisfaction of safety wants/needs.  So what competitive substitute in the beverage category could also provide the value of extra energy?  Anything with sugar.  Still lots of competitive substitutes.

Gatorade promises to make its target customers winners.  With all of their marketing investment in sports over the years, they have become closely associated with the attribute of winning.  So much so that Gatorade has become part of American culture with everyone expecting the the coach of the winning Super Bowl team will have the iced cooler of Gatorade dumped on him at the end of the game.  What competitive substitute in the beverage category will satisfy the ego want/need of being a winner.  The answer is nothing. 

Positioning Guide #9 told us that a product benefit is not a brand benefit.  If a marketer focuses on product benefits, such as “quenches thirst” or “provides extra energy”, your saying that your brand satisfies a lower order want/need in Maslow’s hierarchy.  Your target customer knows that there are a variety of products and brands that could satisfy that lower order want/need.  Marketers who focus on product benefits aren’t giving their target customers a reason to consider their brands.

Positioning Guide 9

A product benefit is not a brand benefit.

A product benefit is what your product does.  When you talk about product benefits to end-users, they have to mentally translate the product benefit into what internal want/need the product benefit satisfies.  If you work in a given product or service category, you are more involved with and knowledgeable about your product or service than your target customer.  For you, the translation from product benefit to satisfied internal want/need seems to be an easy bridge to build.  However, you’re asking your target customer to do mental work in building that bridge, and your target customer doesn’t want to work.  Your product/service category and your brand isn’t important enough to your target customers warrant the mental work that it takes to build bridges in their minds.

As an example, an automobile manufacturer whose brand is associated with safety/security says that their car’s four wheel drive will give you “better traction when the going gets tough” thinking that the target customer will translate that product benefit into satisfaction of the internal want/need for security.  However, target customers think “better traction” is good, but will fail to translate the product benefit into the satisfaction of their safety/security wants/needs.

Let’s assume that the message “better traction” in this example registers with your target customers.  If a marketing researcher were to probe what “better traction” means to the target customers, I believe that the target customers would respond with something generic, such as, “I can keep going.”  In other words, the car is giving them the product benefit that they expect from a car – transportation or mobility.  This is the generic benefit of the product category and doesn’t differentiate the brand from other automotive brands. 

Too many marketers fall into the product benefit trap of more, better, bigger, faster.  They know that a given product attribute is important to their target consumers so they perform rigorous product testing against their competitors’ products.  They want to substantiate a claim of more or better or bigger or faster.  Their competitors are doing exactly the same thing.  One marketer will claim 20% more, the next will claim 15% faster, etc.  Who does the target consumer believe when presented with conflicting claims?  No one. 

We call our brand benefit a unique brand benefit.  If your messaging is claiming more, better, bigger, faster, your benefit isn’t unique.  You’re claiming the same thing as your competitors; you’re just claiming more, better, bigger, faster of the same thing.

Positioning Guide 8

In consumer marketing, your brand’s unique brand benefit should specify how your brand will satisfy the internal wants/needs of your target customer.

If you will recall Maslow’s Hierarchy from the “What is Marketing?” portion of this blog, we used the hierarchy as a concept for understanding consumers’ wants/needs.  If we use Maslow’s Hierarchy and Colgate Total as examples, Colgate Total promises to deliver the benefit of total protection.  We all want to be protected, and one might think that this unique brand benefit satisfies a portion of the safety wants/needs of Colgate Total’s target customers.  But the target customer for family toothpaste is Mom, and Mom wants to protect her family.  Protection of family is probably a social need.  The unique brand benefit of total protection satisfies a portion of the target customers’ social wants/needs.  Total protection is the value that Colgate Total promises to deliver to its target customers.

In the sports drink category, Gatorade through its historical marketing investments with winning teams and winning athletes has established itself as the brand for winners.  The need to be a winner is an ego want/need.  The value that Gatorade delivers to its target customers is that Gatorade will make them a winner.

Gatorade is an excellent example of brand positioning.  Not only has does it own the motivating benefit in the product category, the ownership of “winning” blocks other competitors in the category. That is, since Gatorade is the brand of winners, who buys the other brands in the category?  Losers!

Positioning Guide 7

A brand should stand for one, and only one, unique brand benefit.

This game rule was expressed by Ries and Trout, but it was understood even before the concept of brand positioning was widely accepted.  The master of 1950’s hard-sell advertising was Rosser Reeves of the Ted Bates agency.  Reeves advocated the concept of the Unique Selling Proposition, or USP (Rosser Reeves, Reality in Advertising (New York:  Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1961).  His classic television work for Anacin, Listerine, Colgate toothpaste, and Dwight D. Eisenhower presidential campaign continuously repeated the USP for those brands.  Today, advertising people continue to speak of the USP; however, marketing people refer to their brand’s unique brand benefit.  USP -- unique brand benefit, same thing.

Double Benefit Positioning --Sometimes marketers take multiple product attributes or product benefits and wrap them together into a single unique brand benefit or USP.  In almost all beverage categories, the top-of-mind response to the question, “Why do you drink that beverage?” is “I like the taste.”  Moreover, most beverage categories are 80/20 categories. That is, the 20% of the market who are heavy users consume 80% of the category volume.  Soft drinks, dairy products, bottle water, and beer all follow this pattern.  Ask beer drinkers why they drink beer, and they invariably respond that they like the taste.  Miller Lite was a fast follower in the reduced calorie beer category.  The innovator of reduced calorie beer was Tromer’s Red Letter which was introduced in the 1960’s.  The problem with reduced calorie beer was that the category is a male dominated category.  Heavy beer drinkers tend to be men.  A reduced calorie label provokes imagery of a beer for women in the minds of the heavy beer drinking male.  In 1973, to overcome this girly imagery of reduced calorie beer, Miller introduced Lite using male sports celebrities. With the classic themeline, “tastes great/less filling,” Miller Lite established itself as “everything you always wanted in a beer – and less.”  Take the two product attributes, tastes great and less filling, combine them, and they equal one proposition that is very important to heavy beer drinkers … they can drink more of it.

Multiple Benefit Positioning -- Another example of wrapping multiple attributes into a single unique brand benefit is Colgate Total toothpaste.  The largest segment in the toothpaste category consists of mothers who want protection, an internal want/need, for their families.  For 50 years Proctor & Gamble dominated the category in the U.S. with its Crest.  Crest was the first brand with fluoride and the endorsement of the American Dental Association.  It promised cavity protection which was exactly the benefit that mothers wanted; they wanted to protect their families.  Then Colgate introduced its Colgate Total brand which contains an antibacterial ingredient, Triclosan, in addition to fluoride.  Triclosan prevents gingivitis, plaque, tartar, and bad breath; while the fluoride prevents cavities.  Colgate Total promises mothers one unique brand benefit, Total Protection.  While Crest offers mothers protection, Colgate Total offers them total protection.  Which do you think mothers would buy?  Colgate Total gained the number one spot in the toothpaste category in the U.S. 

More recently Crest has responded with its Crest Pro Health brand extension which contains stannous fluoride and sodium hexametaphosphate.  The claims for Crest Pro Health are very similar to those for Colgate Total.  It’s too early to say which brand will be the longer term leader in the category.

Stretching the Brand Position -- Some European marketers tend to stretch their brands much further than do most U.S. marketers.  As an example, in the U.S. Mercedes-Benz is known for its well engineered luxury cars.  If one probes Mercedes-Benz owners, the brand attributes of well engineered and luxury probably translate to unique brand benefits of prestige and/or comfort.  The U.S. product offering consists of sedans, coupes, convertibles, roadsters, SUVs, and wagons.  In Europe, there are additional offerings: at the low priced end in their consumer products, the A and B classes; and for businesses, a complete line of commercial vehicles.  Mercedes Benz USA has not included these models in their product offering as they know that they would tend to erode the luxury image of the brand among Americans.

Positioning Guides 5 & 6

Positioning Guide #5:  If consumers are familiar with a brand, they have probably positioned it in their minds according to what’s important to them.

If end-users are familiar with a brand, they have probably already “positioned” it in their minds according to what’s important to them.  Ask almost any man if Secret deodorant is a brand that they would use, and the response will be, “No, it’s for women.”  Most men are familiar with the brand, and they have positioned it according to what’s important to them … it’s not for me.

Qualitative marketing researchers sometimes have a respondent use projection to understand how they have positioned a brand in their mind.  Rather than ask respondents what they think of a given brand, the researcher asks respondents to describe the buyer/user of that brand.  In cases where the brand is well positioned in the respondents’ minds, they are able to describe that buyer/user in great deal including appearance, occupation, personality, and lifestyle.

Positioning Guide #6:  The marketing activity of positioning is an attempt to influence the natural consumer process of positioning brands in their mind.

The process of positioning brands in one’s mind is a natural process.  We marketers tap into this natural process.  We attempt to influence the process.  We determine what motivates our target customers to purchase in our product category, and then we attempt to stake our ownership of this motivating benefit.  Through all the elements of the marketing mix, we attempt to convince target end-users that our brand this motivating benefit.  Do this consistently over a long period of time, and eventually target end-users will position your brand in their minds as the solution to their wants/needs.

Positioning Guides 3 & 4

Positioning Guide #3:    All trade is conducted in the human mind. Leo Burnett, 1956

Positioning Guide #4:    Brand positioning takes place in the minds of your target customers.  Al Ries & Jack Trout, 1981

Before Al Ries and Jack Trout popularized the concept of brand positioning, Leo Burnett -- founder of the famous Chicago-based advertising agency -- recognized that leading brands enjoy a bigger and healthier share of the target customer’s mind.  He summarized the cause of this phenomenon with the ground rule that “all trade is conducted in the human mind.” 

We often think of customers purchasing at a given retail outlet.  This line of thought was reinforced by Jerry McCarthy  in his Basic Marketing text [William D. Perreault Jr., E. Jerome McCarthy, and Joseph P. Cannon, Basic Marketing, 17th edition (New York:  McGraw-Hill/Irwin), 2008].  In that text he gave the concept of the marketing mix a new name, the 4Ps.  He reduced the channels of distribution element of the marketing mix was to the “P” word of “Place.”  The actual purchase may take place at a retail outlet or “place”, but it takes place in the mind of the customer.

Building upon the work of Leo Burnett and others, Al Ries and Jack Trout popularized the concept of brand positioning in a series of articles published in Advertising Age and in their now-classic book on brand positioning. [Al Ries & Jack Trout, Positioning:  The Battle for Your Mind (New York: McGraw-Hill), 2000.]  Philip Kotler has said of this book:  “Positioning is a revolutionary idea precisely because it cuts across the other four P’s. It informs each of the P’s and adds consistency to them.  Ever since the 1972 series Advertising Age articles on the subject by the two authors of this book, the discipline of marketing has never been the same.”  And my own thanks to Ries and Trout who inspired many of the positioning guides in this blog.

Postioning Guides 1 & 2

Positioning Guide #1:   In developing your brand’s positioning, constrain yourself to a one page document using language that everyone who works on the brand will understand. 

Positioning Guide #2:  In writing your brand’s summary positioning statement, don’t deviate from this form:  “To (your target market), (your brand) is the brand of (category definition) that (unique brand benefit) because (benefit supports).”

It’s not good enough to have your brand’s position defined in your mind; the brand’s positioning needs to be in a clear written form.  To assist you in this effort, templates for consumer brand positioning and business to business brand positioning are available.  The brand positioning templates for consumer marketing and business to business marketing differ slightly because the motivations of the consumer and business target customers differ.  Consumers are motivated by the need to satisfy internal wants/needs whereas businesses are economically motivated.  Since differing wants/needs are the basis of distinct market segments, the target market descriptions for consumer marketing and business to business marketing will differ; and the two templates accommodate these differences.

The brand position is the last step in marketing strategy development: segmentation, targeting, and positioning.  It is the brand positioning document that will guide you in the development of tactical marketing mix elements: product and services, marketing communications, distribution, and pricing.

The brand positioning template should be completed in language that is understandable to everyone who works on the brand from research and development people to advertising agency personnel.

Constrain yourself to one page although type as small as 10 point font is acceptable.  Many marketers, immersed in their products, feel constrained by the simple form of a summary brand positioning sentence.  They feel the need to elaborate.  They want to be all things good.  Don’t fall into this trap.  Follow the format of the summary sentence.  Failure to do so will result in you confusing yourself and everyone who reads the brand positioning document as to what is your brand’s unique brand benefit and what are the benefit supports.

Targeting Guide #11

Don’t think that you are typical of your target customer.

You know far more about your product category than does your target customer.  You have become immersed in your product category.  You may look at three products in your category, and you see great differences between them.  Your target consumer may see those three products as being identical.  As a demonstration, shown below are three washing machines that are the top, middle, and bottom of a manufacturer’s front loading product line.

The Manufacturers Suggested Retail Prices for the three models are $1,600, $1,300, and $850.  You may be able to identify the low priced model as it appears to have fewer control buttons and a different door color.  Identifying the high priced model from the remaining two, however, is almost impossible.  The marketers in this category can probably see a great deal of difference in the three models because they are immersed in the product category, but it’s doubtful that the same is true for their target customers.

Also don’t believe that you know any “typical” buyers of your product category.  Your friends, relatives, and acquaintances probably all know for whom you work.  They too have heightened awareness of your product category because they know you.  Don’t ask for their opinions because they are not typical of your target customer.  The only person typical of your target customer is your target customer, and the only way to accurately assess the opinions of your target customers is through marketing research.

Targeting Guide #10

All competitors aren’t your brand’s competitors; only those brands that are targeting your target customers are your brand’s competitors.

Marketers sometime react to the actions of all other brands in a given product/service category.  This is often a mistake.  Only those brands which are targeting your brand’s target customers are your competitors.  The graphic to the left is a hypothesize segmentation set space.  The market is segmented along two unspecified dimensions.  The brands are positioned in the set space by consumers who bought the brand.  Your brand is the represented by the black diamond in the upper right quadrant of the set space.  Your only real competitive in this example is Competitor 1; it is the only brand purchased by consumers who are similar to your customers.

Over-focusing on competitor actions are sometimes a symptom of being sales oriented rather than marketing oriented.  The salesman often views the commercial process as a battle between his company and the competitors’ companies.  Walking into a dealer only to find a competitor’s salesman walking out the door only helps to foster this belief.  And the belief is deeply internalized if the salesman discovers that the competitor filled the dealer’s inventory.

However, the goal of marketing isn’t to defeat the competitors.  The goal of marketing is to create genuine customer value.  If the marketer is better at creating this genuine customer value than competitors, the competitors will be defeated.  The defeat is a by-product of marketing, not the goal of marketing.

Targeting Guide #9

Focus only on your current customers, and as your customers die so will your brand.

Even if you execute your marketing mix tactics perfectly so that all of your current customers are target end-users, it’s a mistake to focus only upon your current customers.  With the popularity of Customer Relationship Marketing (CRM) programs, this is an easy thinking trap to fall into.  Your current customers are going to age.  These changes don’t occur rapidly; it’s a slow evolution.  If you don’t continuously attract younger target end-users into your customer base, your customer base is going to grow older and die.  Your brand will die when its target customers die.

Some of the American automobile manufacturers’ more expensive brands were at one time aspirational brands.  A young Ford owner aspired to own a Mercury or a Lincoln.  As consumers aged and as their income increased with age, Mercury and Lincoln had no trouble replacing their dead customers.  The original General Motors family of brands – Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, and Cadillac – was assembled to cover every price point in the automobile market.  General Motors owners aspired to move up this ladder of brands.  However, when the aspirations of younger consumers shifted to Mercedes Benz, BMW, Lexus, Infiniti, etc., the Mercury, Lincoln, Oldsmobile, Buick, and Cadillac brands found themselves with aging and dying customer bases. 

There’s nothing wrong with having either an older target market or an older customer base.  One would naturally expect higher price point brands, such as Mercedes and Rolex, to have older customer bases as discretionary income tends to increase with age.  Marketers who are targeting older consumers need to ensure, however, that as consumers age, they age into prospects for the marketers’ brand.

Targeting Guide #8:

Don’t confuse your current customers with your target customers.

No one can execute a marketing plan perfectly.  Perhaps you have a product or service offering that appeals to customers who are not your target customers.  Possibly some of your distribution attracts customers who are not your target customers.  Or you have an offering that’s priced too high or too low for your target customers.  Regardless of the reason, your brand is going to attract buyers who are not your target customers. 

Consider this graphic, the set space represents all the buyers of a given product category.  The larger circle represents your brand’s target customers, the customers that you are after.  The smaller circle is your actual customers.  Note that only a portion of your target bought your brand.  And some of your customers are not your target end-users.  Think of these customers as being accidental buyers.  This is the result of real world imperfect execution of marketing tactics.  The extent to which your current customers are target customers is a function of how close you are to perfect tactical marketing execution. 

In consumer goods product categories, accidental buyers usually don’t represent a problem for the marketer; they only represent that execution of marketing mix tactics could be improved.  In business to business product categories, accidental buyers may mean that an end-user has purchased and is using a product that is not suitable for their application.  This misapplication may lead to dissatisfaction with the brand, or worse, product liability issues.

Targeting Guide #7

When targeting multiple segments, specify their order of priority:  which is primary, secondary, and tertiary.

This game rule is related to the previous one and comes from practical experience.  In developing marketing mix tactics for multiple market segments, compromises will be made.  Specify which target market is primary, which is secondary, and which is tertiary.  Specification of the priority of market segments will allow you to make compromises in your marketing mix tactics in favor in of your higher priority segments.

Targeting Guide #6

Marketers make their job easier if they target one and only one market segment.

This ground rule is common sense.  If the marketer targets only one segment, the wants/needs of every customer in that segment are going to be the same.  In developing marketing mix tactics, all of the elements of the marketing mix can be optimized to satisfy those wants/needs thereby creating value for target customers.

If a second segment is targeted, then the wants/needs of end-users in the two segments differ to some degree.  In developing marketing mix tactics, what the marketer does for the first segment may be inappropriate for the second segment.  This adds complexity in tactical marketing mix planning.  The marketer must find compromises that are appropriate for both segments.  Often these compromises are not optimal for either segment.

Targeting Guide #5

Focus your scare marketing resources exclusively on your targeted market segment(s).

Once you have identified your targeted market segment(s), devote all of your marketing resources toward moving those target customers toward the purchase of your brand.  Do not waste your scarce marketing resources on end-users who are not your target customers. 

In the real world, marketers often are forced into redirecting marketing resources away from target end-users to non-target end-users.  As an example, there is the opportunity to open new distribution, but marketing research shows that target customers do not purchase at that new distribution.  If sales are going well, the marketer should decline the opportunity.  If sales are not going well, the marketer will probably be forced to accept the opportunity recognizing that it is contrary to the brand’s marketing strategy.  In the real world, one finds that it is impossible to execute a marketing strategy perfectly.  Good marketers will recognize that in accepting the opportunity that they are deviating from their marketing strategy.  Poor marketers will not.

Targeting Guide #4

Targeting is as much exclusionary as it is inclusionary.

Associated Quote:  I know when our businesses have done a good job of market segmentation and targeting when they can tell me who we should not sell to.  Dr. Charles Lillis, former CEO of MediaOne

By identifying the target end-users to whom you are going to direct your marketing efforts, you are consciously making the decision who you are not going after.  The unique brand benefit that you specify in the positioning step of marketing strategy development motivates your target customers to consider your brand.  It’s unlikely that your unique brand benefit would motivate end-users who are not members of your target segment.

Most marketing people sometimes have difficulty in following this marketing guide.  I’ve seen marketers who do have a segmentation scheme, but they target all of the segments identified in the scheme with a single brand.  This is not targeting; it is mass marketing.

Targeting Guide #3

To succeed in the segment, a company or brand must exhibit some strength in serving that segment.

Examples:  If a target market segment has a high degree of price sensitivity driven by low income, the marketer should have the strength of being a low cost producer so that they can offer low prices to their target customers.  If a target market segment is seeking the ego gratification that comes with exclusivity, the marketer needs to have brands that are associated with that attribute.  If the target market segment demands services associated with a physical product, the company needs to have the strength of being a service provider.