Ontela Positioning

5. Develop a positioning statement for your selected target customer(s) that defines the key benefits of the PicDeck service and how the service is differentiated from alternatives that customers might consider.

As to every other company trying to develop and achieve competitive advantage over its rivals in times of rapid technological changes and uncertainty, it is a big challenge to Ontela to live up to the expectations. The demands of consumers of technologically innovative goods are becoming more and more specific and therefore, a primary goal for Ontela is ensuring their customers that PicDeck will function as promised to meet their specific needs. Even the best products may not sell without a successful marketing campaign and without a solid positioning strategy that will give these products an advantage against the biggest competitors. Positioning is a way of differentiating your goods or services from those of competitors by developing a specific marketing mix, which influences the buyer’s decisions. Positioning is a combination of two elements – functionality and communication. Functionality shows the functional benefits that can be obtained from the particular product while the second element concerns the way the brand is communicated to people and how these people perceive it. It is of great importance as it is “not what you do to a product, it is what you do to the mind of a prospect” (Ries and Trout, 1972) that shows how a brand is actually positioned in the market.
Positioning is done for many reasons including satisfying your customers’ needs, profits and utilizing resources in the most effective way. After creating this fantastic new technology and identifying the main target groups, Ontela must establish itself on the market, find a way to attract the desired market segment and prove the service is really worth it. A commonly used positioning strategy is associating the product with specific characteristic or customer benefit. In the case of Ontela, it might be cleverer to attempt to position along several characteristics rather than just one. For example, underlining the speed, convenience and high quality of transfer can really appeal to people belonging to the “Joanne, the photography student” category. This is the primary target segment for Ontela and this category represents young, vivid people who are always on the go and very much appreciate their free time to waste it with activities such as transferring photos from their cellphones to their PCs. The high quality also makes a difference for this segment as people belonging to this group have a more professional approach as well as a keen eye for details. “Joanne, the photography student” segment is comprised of people in their teenage years who are crazy about Internet and social media. The speed and convenience with which a photo can be uploaded on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram immediately after being taken can obviously be very attractive to this segment. To the second segment “Jonathon, tech savvy”, a new technology like PicDeck can be of great interest. People like Jonathon are always seeking a contact with the latest technological innovations so in this case it is not that difficult to win this segment on your side, considering the fact Pic Deck is a first mover on the market. However, a successful communication must be conducted, including establishing a Website as an effective point of first contact and buying good spots to advertise in tech magazines (a favorite reading for this particular segment). Putting advertisements or website references on social media platforms, such as Facebook, may turn out to be a good step towards winning the desired audience as well. With the last segment on target – “Amelia, the Teacher” Ontela must have a more delicate approach as this category is not really that appealed by latest technology. In this case, a more personal approach is required, putting a greater emphasis on the intangible attributes of the service. For example, a TV commercial, showing a happy couple taking photos while being on a vacation and immediately sharing them online for the world to see can convey a strong message to people belonging to “Amelia, the teacher” category. People in this category very much value memories and get easily attached to photos showing previous experiences and therefore they would like to have their photos safe, which is always guaranteed by PicDeck. However, considering the attractiveness of this segment, it might not be feasible to invest such a huge amount of money in advertising, as the risk is pretty high.
Identifying your competitors and their positions is tightly connected to choosing the most relevant positioning strategy for your own goods or services. In the case of Ontela PicDeck, the whole process of choosing the most suitable positioning strategies is accompanied by the excitement of being the first on the market. The company can exploit all the advantages of being the first mover and all benefits that come after securing a good place in the market (word-of-mouth). The alternatives to using the latest PicDeck technology seem to be very unappealing to customers because they are either time-consuming or possible to use only at home and sometimes even both. PicDeck is unique in offering speed and convenience in today’s fast-paced world where time and ease are highly treasured.
(After having discussed some potential positioning strategies, it is probably important to note that in the case of not only Ontela PicDeck, but also all other technological advances, direct selling is not recommended as people tend to be really skeptical when it comes to this type of communication and technology simply because there is so much of it recently.??? This communication strategy might have a reverse effect.)

6. Develop a positioning statement for wireless carriers that Ontela can use to communicate the value of the PicDeck service for wireless carriers.

Ontela’s wireless carriers are its direct customers and it is of great importance that first and foremost a suitable positioning statement for wireless carriers is made. This technology is to be extremely appealing to wireless carriers because it provides wireless users with a service previously nonexistent. This new technology might act as an encouragement to those users to turn to a particular wireless carrier instead of another one, late to pick up on this new technology.
The positioning statement must again be a part of two elements – functionality and communication. The functionality of this service has been discussed in the previous section. The fact that PicDeck allows a seamless transfer of photos to PCs and other networking devices saves customers time and provides them with convenience, putting the company in a very good position with wireless carries, that not only want to expand their customer bases but also to satisfy all their existing customers’ needs. In addition to that, as mentioned before positioning is done for many reasons, including profits. This statement attracts our attention to the fact that Ontela PicDeck transfers the responsibility for branding, pricing and marketing of the service to the wireless carriers resulting in profits for both companies and respectively to mutual satisfaction. Segmentation of the market is tightly connected to the concept of positioning and identifying the most important segments for Ontela to be “Joanne, the photography student”, “Jonathon, tech savvy” and “Amelia, the teacher” is extremely important when creating the positioning statement with wireless carriers. This is so because those three categories comprise a huge portion of all people using wireless connection nowadays. These are young or middle-aged people, students or working people who are always on the go. Wireless carriers should partner with Ontela PicDeck to increase not only the overall value for the wireless subscriber but also for their own benefit (profits, brand loyalty, competitive advantage).
To sum up, every positioning statement is made to underline the major benefit of a specific product or service to make it stand out. The most significant benefit of Ontela PicDeck surely is its speed and convenience of use as well as the size of the customer base it can attract in the case of wireless carriers.