Positioning: A Powerful Play in B2B Marketing

The business-to-business sales landscape creates a number of interesting marketing challenges. From a finite number of potential customers to smaller product offerings, B2B marketing can leave the impression messaging possibilities are limited. But as often happens, when the picture appears smaller, a highly focused solution comes into view and creates the perfect opportunity for positioning.

More Specific than Branding

Although positioning is a strategic sibling to branding, its narrower characteristics allow it to be applied for just a specific amount of time or only to a singular product. In addition, it also has the potential to not only position the company’s product, but by extension, its competitor’s product as well.

Positioning “Proves” an Ideal Move

Recently Havco Wood Products – the industry leader for dry-freight trailer flooring – found themselves in a situation where positioning their flagship product became essential. Over 20 years ago, Havco invented the industry’s first composite floor – the Fusion Floor by Havco – which revolutionized the category. The floor combined a base layer of oak with a high-strength composite layer which made the floor stronger and lighter than a traditional wood floor.

In 2021, Havco faced a challenge as their patent for the composite floor was coming to an end; allowing their competitors to enter the market with competing products. To prepare, Havco utilized a powerful positioning to reinforce their reputation for innovation and their status as the leading manufacturer of composite floors. The undeniable fact was that Havco had the only floor with proven longevity and ROI. In fact, they had 20 years of documented proof. So, while the competitors might have been able to make claims of strength, they had no proof their floors would last.

Havco’s positioning, The Industry’s Only Proven Composite Floor, quickly communicated that the Fusion Floor was the original and the only proven investment available to the industry while at the same time positioning its competitor’s products as unproven copies of the original.

Jump Company’s positioning for the Fusion Floor by Havco came to life through a spectrum of digital and traditional marketing channels as well as editorial-length industry communication. By reinforcing the floor’s 20-year track record of documented performance, Havco was positioned to remain the industry leader.