Complexity is easy. Clarity is hard. And in B2B, where everyone promises transformation and innovation, the brands that rise above are those that communicate with confidence and precision.
If your brand doesn’t stand for something distinct, it risks becoming a commodity. And in an industry where the sales cycle is long, buyers are risk-averse, and multiple stakeholders are involved, clarity and confidence in your brand positioning can make or break a deal.
Positioning is more than a tagline or elevator pitch. It’s the foundation of how your brand is perceived in the market category it competes in. It’s how you define your market position, create relevance with your target audience, and build long-term differentiation that delivers competitive advantage.
Why Brand Positioning Matters More Than Ever
Brand positioning isn’t just a marketing exercise. It’s a strategic imperative.
In a market that’s constantly evolving, your market position becomes a north star, anchoring the brand while allowing creative flexibility.
Without clear strategic positioning, even the most innovative product struggles to stand out. Your messaging wobbles. Sales and marketing efforts lose focus. And your brand becomes reactive rather than owning its space.
A strong position delivers three strategic advantages:
- Internal Alignment
It aligns your team around a clear brand direction. Sales, marketing, product, and leadership know what the brand stands for and how to communicate it consistently. - External Perception
It defines how your target customers and potential customers see you in relation to competitive alternatives. Positioning clarifies your unique value proposition and reduces friction in decision-making. - Go-to-Market Efficiency
It enables smarter marketing. With a clear positioning statement, you know what to say, where to show up, and how to stand out. You’re not reacting to market trends, you’re driving them.
3 Steps to Powerful Brand Positioning
Step One: Know Your Audience Better Than Anyone Else
Great positioning doesn’t start with your product. It starts with your target audience.
Understanding your buyers, and that means really understanding them, is the most overlooked step in B2B brand strategy. Many companies stop at job titles or firmographics. But to position effectively, you need to go deeper.
You need to understand your target market’s:
- Motivations: What are they trying to achieve?
- Fears: What risks are they trying to avoid?
- Buying triggers: What makes them say yes or no?
- Emotional drivers: What makes them feel confident in a decision?
Best Practices for Audience Insight:
Positioning starts with empathy. The more intimately you understand your buyers’ needs, motivations, and pain points, the more effectively you can craft a message that feels made just for them. Start with these practices to build that understanding.
- Customer interviews: Talk to 5–10 existing customers across roles. Ask open-ended questions.
- Sales team input: Your front-line sales team knows what resonates and what stalls deals.
- Behavioral data: Analyze content engagement, funnel behavior, and conversion data.
- Customer feedback: Tap into support tickets, surveys, and post-sale reviews to hear what customers are saying in their own words.
- Personas with depth: Go beyond demographics. Build buyer personas based on real behaviors and objections.
At Sköna, we believe human-centered branding starts here. It’s not about what you sell; it’s about who you’re selling to and why it matters to them. Read more on our blog about why human-centered branding matters in B2B.
Step Two: Identify and Amplify What Sets You Apart
Once you know your audience, it’s time to define your “only-ness.”
That’s not just what you do. It’s what only you do, why your brand exists in a way no other brand can replicate in your market category.
To get there, go beyond features and functionality. Look at:
- Strategic benefits: How do you help companies gain a competitive advantage?
- Emotional benefits: How do you help buyers feel confident, empowered, or secure?
- Cultural values: What beliefs shape your company’s approach?
To uncover your brand’s true point of differentiation, start by asking the tough, strategic questions. What do we offer that no one else can? What are we the absolute best at in the world? What would our customers genuinely miss if we disappeared tomorrow? And just as importantly, what are we willing to say that others aren’t? The answers to these questions form the foundation of a brand position that’s not only bold, but defensible and authentic.
This is where boldness counts. Vanilla won’t cut it. Brands that win are unafraid to lean into a specific point of view and defend it.
Step Three: Analyze the Market and Find the Gap
Now that you’ve defined your value, you need to position it relative to your competitive landscape.
Start with a Competitive Audit:
To claim a distinct space in your market, you first need to understand the landscape you’re operating in. A competitive audit helps you identify where others are positioned, what messages are overused, and where real opportunity exists. Start by:
- Analyzing direct and indirect competitors’ messaging.
- Plotting their positions across key attributes (e.g., price vs. performance, legacy vs. modern).
- Identifying patterns: Are most players saying the same thing?
Look for white space, not just to be different, but to be meaningfully distinct. Your goal is intentional contrast, not arbitrary disruption.
Tips to Find Your Positioning Gap:
- Avoid overused claims: Everyone is “customer-centric” or “AI-powered.” Find a fresh angle.
- Own an emotion: Can you lead with confidence, simplicity, agility, or trust?
- Map perception, not just reality: How the target market perceives you is what matters.
When done right, your positioning should feel both strategic and creative. You need to be sharp enough to direct your messaging, yet flexible enough to grow with your business.
Sköna’s Approach to B2B Brand Positioning
At Sköna, we approach positioning as both science and art. We dig deep to understand your business, target market, and audience, then craft a positioning statement that’s both true to your DNA and brave enough to stand out.
We’ve spent 20+ years helping B2B brands break out of the sea of sameness by articulating a positioning that’s bold, human, and distinctly them.
We bring brands to life with a process that focuses on learning, illuminating, igniting, and amplifying.
Our Process Includes:
- Collaborative discovery workshops: Together with your marketing team, we uncover the essence of your brand mission, vision, values, and differentiators.
- Audience and competitor research: We bring fresh outside-in perspective to validate assumptions and find opportunity gaps.
- Brand frameworks: We synthesize everything into simple, actionable frameworks that guide messaging, creative, and campaigns.
- Creative articulation: Positioning only works if it’s expressed well. We build visual systems and messaging platforms that bring your positioning to life across every touchpoint.
We bring a unique blend of Silicon Valley boldness and Scandinavian clarity to everything we do, making the complex simple and the ordinary unforgettable.
Our Brand Positioning in Action
Alteryx
When Alteryx came to us, they were already a leader in data analytics automation, but they felt stuck in a “tool” narrative. They wanted to evolve into something more meaningful, more empowering. Together, we ran collaborative workshops with their team, digging into who they were and what really set them apart.
The breakthrough? A shift in focus, from empowering data scientists to empowering everyone with analytics. That repositioning transformed the brand into something more human, more inclusive, and more business-driven. It aligned their internal teams, sharpened their voice, and gave their marketing efforts a stronger, global platform to grow from.
See how we helped Alteryx reposition from tool to transformational brand
Kleer
Kleer, formerly known as PE Accounting, came to us at a pivotal moment. They had evolved far beyond their origins as an accounting platform, but their brand hadn’t kept up. Internally, there was confusion: were they a consulting firm or a tech company? Externally, their messaging didn’t reflect their true capabilities.
Working closely with their team, we helped them define a new category—Finance as a Service (FaaS)—that better captured their end-to-end value. We also led the renaming process, landing on Kleer to express their commitment to clarity, insight, and confident financial decision-making. The new brand identity featured clean design, growth-oriented symbolism, and a voice that stood out in the Swedish fintech space.
When Kleer launched in December 2024, the reaction was immediate—internally energizing, and externally resonant. They now have a bold, clear platform for growth, and a brand that finally matches their ambition.
See how we helped Kleer create a bold new brand that showcased clarity and growth
Unsupervised
Unsupervised was a young, bold startup in the AI analytics space. They had great technology, but in a noisy market, they needed a story that would stick. So we rolled up our sleeves and got to work, interviewing stakeholders, digging into the product, and uncovering what made them different. What surfaced was powerful: their ability to find hidden growth opportunities that others miss.
That became the heart of their positioning. With a clear, ownable narrative, and a visual system to match, they walked away with a brand that resonated with customers, with investors, and with their own team.
Read how we helped Unsupervised craft a narrative that sticks
If you’re looking to sharpen your positioning, evolve your brand, or claim space in a crowded market, read our article, Beyond the Buzz: Building a Distinct AI Brand in a Saturated Market. In it, we unpack what it really takes to craft an ownable brand in one of the most crowded and hype-driven categories today.
Share
