3 Brand Positioning Mistakes Your Startup Cannot Afford to Make

For about a 3-year span, regardless of how popular you were amongst those at your high school, college, or group of friends, as a Millennial, if you didn’t have a Myspace account, it was almost as if you were considered a total social outcast amongst your peers. 

If you happened to be anything like myself at the time, a person who took pride in never having created a Myspace account simply for the sake that everyone else your age seems to have had one—like myself, you also allowed your stubbornness to cause you to miss out on a pretty significant moment in history.

That’s because Myspace is considered to be the very first social media platform in the world to achieve global popularity and massive success. 

At its peak, Myspace once had over 300 million users and was atop of the social media landscape. Nevertheless, the social media behemoth would go on to lose its popularity primarily due to a positioning mistake. 

Becoming too comfortable 

You build brand loyalty in a supermarket the same way you build mate loyalty in a marriage. You get there first and then be careful not to give them a reason to switch. — Al Ries and Jack Trout, Positioning: How to be seen and heard in the overcrowded marketplace

Architects of the brand positioning theory, Al Ries and Jack Trout, certainly understood the assignment. And although I do not believe that true brand loyalty exists, it is undeniable that much like a marriage, a sure way to get customers to commit to your brand and remain that way is by solidifying a positive place in their mind.

And just as importantly, not giving them any practical reasons to make a switch.

Also, similar to a marriage partner, another easy way for your brand to lose its committed customers is by taking them for granted; a mistake that was made by Myspace during its peak (2005-08) when the brand neglected their UX by thinking users would remain committed to the platform.

Albeit at the time, Myspace had no direct competitors. 

That crucial mistake, along with the rise of Facebook, are the primary reasons Myspace lost tens of millions of users, popularity,  as well as their position as the biggest social media platform in the world.

Promoting the wrong category

It’s better to be a big fish in a small pond (and then increase the size of the pond) than to be a small fish in a big pond. — Al Ries and Jack Trout, Positioning: How to be seen and heard in the overcrowded marketplace.

You’re probably familiar with the old adage, Choose your battles wisely. Well, heeding that sage advice could certainly save your business. It could also save you from having to experience many sleepless nights. Because as tempting as it may seem to go after the big guys in your brand’s category, as a startup, it’s usually best to avoid fueling their ire.

And make no mistake, entering into the same category as the big guys and threatening their market share is one of the top ways of igniting their ire.

I know what you’re probably thinking: DeJuan, you just used Facebook as an example of a startup brand taking down a social media giant in Myspace! True… you’d be correct in that assertion. However, it’s important to keep in mind that Facebook did not start off as a direct competitor to Myspace. 

In fact, Facebook initially launched in a totally different category than Myspace, as an exclusive college-based website with the purpose of connecting college students. 

And by the time Facebook broadened its target audience to the general public, Myspace was already on the decline. And Facebook already had hundreds of thousands of devoted users. 

Being too far ahead of your time 

Positioning is an organized system for finding a window in the mind. It is based on the concept that communication can only take place at the right time and under the right circumstances. — Al Ries and Jack Trout, Positioning: How to be seen and heard in the overcrowded marketplace

Founders oftentimes have such incredible, innovative, and groundbreaking ideas—they are doomed to fail. That’s because some ideas are so far ahead of their time—consumers cannot comprehend the need for them at the moment.

Take online grocers for example. Brands like: Instacart, Uber Eats, and Amazon Fresh are all now extremely popular internationally.

Nevertheless, long before any of those brands existed (back in 1999), Bay Area startup Webvan, officially launched nationwide; offering 30-minute delivery windows for groceries their website’s users ordered online. 

If you’re familiar with the dot-com boom of the late 90s, many would point to Webvan as one of the largest dot-com flops in history for various reasons. 

One of which being that the idea of e-grocery was so ahead of its time—consumers back in the early 2000s simply did not see a need to order their groceries online at the time (Amazon Fresh launched in 2020). 

As a founder, there's nothing wrong with having innovative ideas. Heck, Silicon Valley was built on them. But having an idea for a product or service that is so far ahead of its time—consumers cannot fathom a need for it in the present or near future—could position your brand next to Webvan, which is surely a place that you don’t want it to be. 

There’s only three ways for you to know if your product is truly prepared to enter the market: test, test, and then test some more! 

Let’s chat!

If you’d like help positioning your brand in the rightful place in the mind of its target customers, contact us today and let’s schedule a client consultation. And oh yeah… it is totally complimentary!