The positioning of new offers is a sometimes delicate choice for product managers. Address a broad audience or target specific targets? The choice is sometimes difficult. Consumer insight plays a role in the positioning decision.
Think broadly to capture as much of the market as possible, at the risk of adopting a message that is too general and not very differentiating. See targeted to gain differentiation and relevance, at the risk of missing out on other market segments. This dilemma is materialized in particular by two central, closely linked questions: what benefits should be highlighted and to what audience(s)?
The connection between consumer insights and the positioning of the offer
Insights highlight points of tension that reveal market opportunities. Each benefit produced is a response to at least one insight containing a tension. The selection of insights to be addressed is therefore absolutely strategic because it will determine the consumer tensions that we will address. The relevance of these choices will greatly condition the attractiveness of the offer. But we can make two types of mistakes: seeing too narrowly or seeing too broad.
See too targeted:Sometimes a product manager has a preconceived vision of the niche targeting his offer should address. It then positions its offer in the spirit of this single niche. However, the value proposition could correspond to a sometimes larger audience or to another target, causing the brand to lose the possibility of capturing certain market shares. The positioning then excludes targets that could have been eligible. This posture often highlights the weight of preconceived ideas of which a product manager can be a prisoner. However, this is not the most common case.
See too broad:an offer can present a large number of benefits and the temptation is then strong to promote all of these benefits so that any consumer can identify with at least one of them. But multiplying the benefits communicated - in the hope of covering the entire market - requires too much deciphering and understanding from each consumer. The latter will then have difficulty understanding the biases and the value proposition will appear difficult to read in light of the consumer's personal expectations. The offer will lose clarity and therefore attractiveness. Such a broad scope often reveals that the product manager does not have all the elements to decide with certainty and form a conviction. This is a fairly common case.
Insights as a key to arbitration
While an offer can respond to numerous insights, knowing how to select the most powerful insights means addressing the strongest market tensions, and therefore choosing the most relevant benefits that we will mobilize in response. Selecting insights also means identifying the populations who are most sensitive to them. This work of evaluating the insights therefore leads to a clear bias on the benefits to be presented and a precise profiling of the populations to which we must address. Evaluating and profiling insights therefore provides the keys to positioning an offer and secures strategic choices.