In this post, we’re going to look at how ChatGPT differentiates internal and external positioning when it comes to marketing, and how this artificial intelligence response reflects reality. Although I’ll go into more detail, ChatGPT did an overall solid job at defining these two terms and providing context as to their purposes, key elements, and goals, but missed a few important features of both terms.
First, this is the prompt I gave to ChatGPT: Explain the difference between internal and external positioning.
And more importantly, here is the response it provided, with some edits in bold, italicized text that I have added in:
Internal and external positioning refer to how a company or product is perceived and communicated, but they focus on different audiences and objectives.
Internal Positioning:
- Audience: The company’s own employees, leadership, and stakeholders.
- Purpose: Aligning the organization’s team around a consistent message, mission, values, and goals. Internal positioning ensures that everyone within the company understands what the brand stands for, its unique value, how it differentiates from competitors [your target audience, the problem you are trying to solve, and how each of your products are unique from one another].
- Key Elements:
- Vision and mission statements
- Company culture
- Internal communications and training
- Employee buy-in and advocacy
- [defining product distinctiveness]
- Goal: Create unity and consistency within the company to support its broader business objectives. It also boosts morale, improves collaboration, and empowers employees to deliver a cohesive external message.
External Positioning:
- Audience: Customers, clients, competitors, and the market at large.
- Purpose: [Shape] How the company or product is perceived by the public, specifically in terms of its value proposition, unique selling points, and place in the market. [More often than not, external positioning is used to distinguish one product from a competing product] External positioning helps define how a company distinguishes itself from competitors and appeals to its target audience.
- Key Elements:
- Marketing campaigns
- Product features and benefits
- Brand image and public relations
- Customer experience and feedback
- Goal: Build brand awareness, attract customers, and shape market perception. Strong external positioning helps a brand or product stand out in a crowded marketplace.
In essence, internal positioning is about aligning the company from the inside, while external positioning is about shaping the perception and value of the company or product to the outside world. Both need to be aligned to ensure authenticity and consistent messaging.
As I stated earlier in this post, this response overall provides a comprehensive overview of the terms, but there are a few critical details that need to be addressed.
First, ChatGPT missed the critical detail that internal positioning creates a contrast between products within a firm to increase sales overall. In saying this, I mean that because PepsiCo owns both Mountain Dew and Pepsi sodas, they work with internal positioning to create a distinction between the two sodas. This ensures that PepsiCo is able to sell more of each product, defining a specific market that is most interested in each product, so they don’t draw sales away from the other product. So while ChatGPT did cover how internal positioning creates a company culture, it was misleading in the sense that it focused more broadly on distinguishing brands, rather than covering the idea that this strategy is used to increase a firm’s total sales of their products.
Similarly, ChatGPT strayed away from talking about how external positioning is used to promote their products and focused on how brands are using external positioning to make themselves look unique in the market. In this sense, the artificial intelligence response wasn’t wrong, but rather, incomplete.
Lastly, ChatGPT missed a critical opportunity to share how internal and external positioning connect to other areas in business, such as public relations, promotion, the overall marketing strategy, brand awareness, and more. It does touch on the goals, such as brand awareness, that these terms attempt to meet, but fails to explain what ‘brand image and public relations’ has to do with these concepts.
So overall? This modern-day artificial intelligence is pretty spot-on. With that said, it’s always wise to keep an eye out for ideas the program may fail to address, or address with little information, therefore becoming misleading. I guess we’ll only see where ChatGPT goes from here!
