No matter what business situation you face, we know that accurately defining your Brand’s Strategic Positioning is fundamentally critical to achieving sustainable business growth. Your positioning is how you want your target consumers to think, feel and perceive your brand or product relative to your competition. Everything your business does should directly flow from (and thus, deliver against) your positioning – not just your marketing efforts, but your operations, your customer service, your sales presentations … everything! If you don’t get this right and nail your positioning, what your customers see, experience, and begin to feel about your brand will be at best, sub-optimal. As you can tell, we’re a little passionate about the importance of positioning. It’s how you truly begin to build affinity for your brand.

What does this entail? Rigorously and thoroughly …

• reviewing all applicable information and research available,
• defining your target,
• understanding your competition,
• identifying the key strategic insights for growth,
• determining the optimal point of difference to best compete and maximize sales, and
• writing your Brand Positioning in a concise, clear way that anyone can understand and embrace.

We are experts in all these steps. Should any one of them require additional insights beyond what’s available, we can commission research through our network of Market Research professionals to get the answers you need in the most cost effective way possible.

We make sure your business’ brand, products or services are positioned to meet customers’ needs, so you’re not just trying to find customers for your products, but that everything you do will build affinity with your customers and keep them loyal to you for years to come.

Developing the optimal Marketing Plan starts with a full understanding of your target consumer and, in particular, how they shop your category.

The way consumers shop has radically changed! Consumer behavior has changed. How they learn about brands (getting much better educated), how they decide what to buy (asking for advice, reading reviews), how they engage with brands overtime (via social media and communities) – it’s truly multi-channel. Consumers are learning, deciding and engaging with brands on their own terms, and Marketers need to help that process of how they shop.

McKinsey & Company, Management Consultants on the forefront of this thinking, has defined the way people shop today as the Consumer Decision Journey:

• The CDJ starts with the CONSIDERATION stage; there’s a trigger that puts you in the market for something.
• Then you research, look at websites, read about products, read reviews, see comparisons – a whole step of EVALUATION. You’ll likely discover brands you never heard of before you begin to narrow down your options.
• Ultimately, you BUY based on what you decide, how much you’re willing to spend and where you want to buy it.
• Once you buy something, then you EXPERIENCE it.
• You may share your experience (e.g., write a review, share it on Facebook) – an ADVOCACY stage.
• Finally, you might BOND with the brand, staying in the Loyalty Loop.

For a marketer, it’s not just getting someday to buy something. It’s also everything that happens after that turns that customer into 1) an advocate that will drive other customers in and 2) somebody who can buy more from you. It’s an iterative journey, where brands go in and out of consideration based on past experiences.

One brand who needs to drive awareness of its new product may determine the Consideration stage the most important and channel their resources behind SEO and Google. Another brand may need to compete based on how its product better meets a consumer need during the Evaluation stage, and thus, spend on reaching key influencers and/or creating usage videos to share on affiliate websites and YouTube. A third brand may discover that most users in their category are influenced by others’ experiences and recommendations, so funds would be best spent on Customer Service, fostering a community on Facebook, encouraging ratings and reviews, and obtaining testimonials.

The KEY is to understand the Consumer Decision Journey for your brand – which touch-points matter most – and align your marketing activities against those touch-points. This is how we develop the optimal Marketing Plan for a brand;  we identify the best ways to reach your target, and we recommend how to allocate your marketing budget so that it has the most impact and achieves your marketing goals most efficiently.

Note, our approach most often requires research to gain consumer insights particularly to your brand and category. We bring in such expertise as needed.

Similarly, we tap our network of experts specializing in Media and/or Public Relations, as necessary, to help in the planning process. Should you ultimately choose to implement the Marketing Plan that we recommend, they will be ready to execute the Plan on your behalf.

If you have already established relationships with such experts that you’re satisfied with, we can effectively work with them to develop the right mix of programs and support for your Marketing Plan.

If you require or desire the resources to implement the Plan, we’ll be ready to make it happen for you.

We tap our network of creative resources to develop great content that will enable you to build affinity for your product/service and brand.

• Communication that’s smart, relevant and differentiating.
• Creative that tells stories across different, but complementary medium.
• Messaging that communicates your point-of-difference (i.e., your competitive advantage) in ways that not only reach your target consumers efficiently where they are, but also in ways they will find you.

In essence, we develop content that builds relationships and increases sales by growing affinity with your customers.