What's The Future Of DTC Brand Positioning? (2025)
- mrpapri1
- Apr 8
- 8 min read
It takes years, sometimes even decades to build a successful DTC brand.
And even if you look around, it is isn't much of a motivation. There's already countless brands just like you that are ginormous compared to you. And they're grabbing all the market share.
Take for example: the desert rodent called the Jerboa. It's smaller than a mouse, looks defenseless, and at first glance, you would think any predator would be able to catch it.
Here's the kicker: Even with foxes, and owls roaming around, it can escape them effortlessly. It has a jumping height of over 3 meters (10ft). Despite being 5cm or 2 inches tall, it can jump incredible heights compared to how tiny it is.
Brand differentiation is essentially like the jumping height of the Jerboa. Even if you're a tiny brand, there's still a chance to leap very far. Further than 3 meters.
Key Takeaways
Stand Out with Positioning:
Brand positioning helps even the smallest DTC brands compete with giants by emphasizing uniqueness and value.
Think Like a Jerboa:
Just like the tiny desert rodent that leaps over predators, positioning helps your brand take big leaps in a crowded market.
Steps to Position Your Brand Effectively:
1. Understand Your Audience
Go beyond demographics—dig into emotions, desires, fears, and frustrations.
Analyze support chats, reviews, and social media comments.
Use competitor reviews to discover customer pain points.
2. Align Your Brand Around That Data
Craft a brand voice that matches your audience.
Make sure visuals, website design, packaging, and customer support all reinforce your positioning.
Ensure consistency across all touchpoints to build trust.
3. Use AI to Speed Up the Process (Optional)
Use AI tools to analyze reviews and extract insights.
Automate data collection but don’t rely on AI for creative messaging.
Let AI support your strategy—not define it.
What's brand positioning?
Brand positioning is the strategy of defining how a brand appears in the minds of consumers compared to its competitors. It’s about identifying and communicating what makes your brand unique, valuable, and relevant to your target audience.
Benefits of brand differentiation
Last night I sat down and I philosophized something pretty daunting.
You know, I like to sometimes detox from all devices, and just sit down and engage with my thoughts. It's really good for your mental health.
And that afternoon I realized...
Good brand positioning is just like inventing something unheard of before. For example AI, the internet, or electricity.
When Nikola Tesla invented electricity, it was something unique. Something humans didn't even know was possible. And the same thing can happen for your brand, too. If you're unique, it will leave a similar impact on your potential customers.
Now:
Brand positioning does just that. It makes your brand unique and appear as something new, something extraordinary.
It makes you appear as if you're the only one. And that's what you want, right?
Chanel got famous with brand positioning
Great brand identity makes you an authority.
Able to dictate higher prices, persuade shoppers almost immediately, and earn more revenue. A market positioning strategy makes you appear different. In a good way.
"In order to be irreplaceable, you must be different." - Coco Chanel
The guys in Chanel were rocking this strategy hard. And guess what? If you ask anybody on the street right now if they know this brand... they will know it. Differentiation is memorable.
Sameness is forgettable.
Easier decision-making
What if you were able to make decisions in your company with such confidence... such purpose...
That it would empower anybody around. Employees and customers included. Brand positioning gives you strategic focus, because you know what works, and what doesn't for your brand.
So you can spend less time experimenting strats that most likely won't be worth it, and focus on the things that truly bring results for the brand.
Quicker brand extensions
A clearly positioned brand can expand much easier, and faster than a brand that's not positioned.
If you've got only a few products, you will benefit from this one. Brand perception makes you able to expand to new categories and products much faster, because customers already know what your brand stands for.
Competitors can't easily copy you
Just imagine spending 6 months developing a brand new product.
The amount of late nights... The man hours spent. And you're proud of it, too. Every single time you take a glance, you really believe this product will be successful.
After perfecting everything, you decide to launch this work of art.
And believe it or not? The sales go through the roof. It was a success. Now... you can finally kick back your feet and reap the fruit of your labor.
About two weeks later, you decide to check on your competitors. Just to sporadically check up on them. There it is. They've copied that product you've worked so hard on, and getting more sales than you. Now, I don't know about you... but I would lose my sh*t.
Here's the thing:
With good brand positioning, your competitors can still copy your products, but they can't copy how you've aligned your brand.
And at the end of the day, that is what empowers your products to set higher margins.
Step #1: 👥Understanding your audience
This first strategy involves gathering info about your customers first (if you haven't done that yet, it's crucial for anything in marketing), and also going beyond just demographics.
You've got to find out that deep motivation behind your customer. It needs to be the mindset, and emotions. Almost every DTC purchase is emotional.
Know who you're talking to
Trying to position your brand without deeply knowing your audience is like trying to shoot a bullseye with three blindfolds on. Maybe even four.
You've got to know your audience's:
desires
fears
frustrations
Desires
A desire of a customer is the underlying reason they purchase in the first place. It can be the desire to fulfill a need or the desire to solve a problem.
Without a desire, no action is taken.
Similarly, if you don't truly understand your customers desires, you can alienate them.
Fears
When someone fears something, it's because of a past experience, or a belief.
And what other better way to find this out than studying your competitors? Take a look at:
your competitor's one-star reviews
your competitor's social media comments
One of their customers might say "The sizing wasn't right. Sleeves were too long.", and to combat this fear, you could say "Check out our accurate sizing guide. And even if it turns out to be wrong, there's a 14-day moneyback guarantee. Nothing to lose here."
Frustrations
Similarly to fears, frustrations were formed from past experiences, or beliefs. However, past experiences are more common frustrations than beliefs.
What are the best ways to understand your audience?
There are numerous ways, with varying effectivity, with more manual labor, or more time consuming.
Understanding desires, fears, and frustrations (LEVEL 1)
Whip up a spreadsheet.
Now, you're going to find your desires, fears, and frustrations from your:
support chats
5-star reviews
social media comments
Try to get at least 5 for each.
You can use my template for making things easier. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KL7pPQOlu81FnDLPaKG_hoJWkWzOUwvt-xTbKyg8S0I/edit?usp=sharing
Researching competitors and creating a gap (LEVEL 2)
It involves learning as much about your competitors as possible, then becoming the opposite of what they are.
Customer surveys, and interviews (LEVEL 3)
Now this one is the key for finding out the deep-ingrained mindsets, and emotions behind your customers.
What's the true reason beyond logic that they chose your brand? Very important to know.
Once again, you can use my template to know all the questions necessary for this.
Shhh... Are you sure your copywriting isn't costing you sales?
Find out if your copywriting is leaving money on the table.
Step #2: 🎨Align everything around it
By now, I'm assuming you've at least went through LEVEL 1 of the previous section.
If not, go back and do the first level, or even more. The more data you have, the better the brand positioning.
Your brand voice
Say your audience are people aged 45-60. They like peace, integrity, and reliability.
You would need to have somewhat of a professional brand tone. Of course, not an emotionless one. Have some light jokes here and there, but try not to make your brand voice stand up comedy.
And in the opposite world, let's imagine your audience is people from Europe, and they love jokes. You'd choose a friendly, and laid-back tone.
What I'm trying to get at is: always match your customers.
Your visuals and design
You sell minimalist and premium products?
Align the fonts, colors, and design around that. If your branding is consistent, it is seen as more trustworthy in the face of customers. I mean, it makes sense.
If you had minimalist branding there, professional here, and colorful branding over there, it wouldn't exactly scream trust.
Of course, I'm not just talking about the website. Your visuals and design must match that of your brand in:
the website
ads
social content
packaging
etc...
Customer support
This one is often overlooked, but can work better than brand voice and visuals combined. The little things matter, too.
Imagine a scenario where a brand you really like doesn't reply to your support message in two days. They also position their products, and brand as "fast". That wouldn't really leave a good impression, would it?
Match even the little things such as customer support to your brand. Is your brand friendly and outgoing? Make the support feel like a friend-to-friend conversation.
Step #3 (optional): 🤖The use of AI to make things quicker
If you've read some of my blogs, you might know that in some cases, I'm heavily against AI.
Like for example, using artificial intelligence to write copy. Sales copy to be exact (the kind designed to make you big money). Now, why am I saying AI marketing tools shouldn't write this division of copy?
I'm not saying it shouldn't.
However, you have to keep in mind that AI is not even close when it comes to human creativity or emotions. And those are things that can make or break your sales copy.
Collect data
Just like I mentioned earlier, we need to collect data from your:
support chats
5-star reviews
social media comments
And it helps if you've got a dedicated web page for each one. So that you can just plop in the link, and the chatbot will read and do its thing. Usually, DTC brands have a page for reviews.
Now, it's time to use a prompt: From these links, extract the fears, desires, and frustrations of my customers in the context of marketing.
Aligning your brand around it
Once you've got this data, you might already have a good idea of your customers:
age
gender
geo location
And now, you can position your brand around this.
Use the prompt: According to this data, what would be the best brand voice, brand design (website, ads, social, packaging), customer support?
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the benefits of brand positioning?
The ability to gain market share from ginormous competition, higher margins, and more customer satisfaction.
What is the main purpose of positioning?
To demonstrate the unique qualities of your brand and product, making you stand out.
What are the disadvantages of brand positioning?
If your positioning is weak, it will be easy for your competitors to copy you and outperform. And on the other hand, it may alienate a broad range of customers only to focus on niche audiences.
