Communicating Unique Value - Methodology

Testing your target customers to understand their needs, pain-points, receptivity to your company and to your offering is undeniably the right first step in a new branding/ positioning initiative - or, in a diagnosis of current brand effectiveness. Gantry Group's Communicating Unique Value practice suite arms you with information about how effective your marketing has been to date -- before you start in on the task of overhauling your positioning and strategic messaging.

Step 1 - Current Market Benchmark:
Using online surveys and focus groups, you can quickly test the effectiveness of your current market communications package, as well as gather important insights and attributes about the target market.

Step 2 - Target Market Profile:
Applying discoveries from Step 1, and additional secondary research about the market, a detailed Market Profile can be developed about your prospects.

Step 3 - Current Offering Benchmark:
Benchmarking your offering for features, performance, ease of use, follow-through of service, etc. is mandatory. This is the heart of your strategic roadmap - you can only reach goals if you can pinpoint where you currently are. Blending this corporate and offering situation analysis with the market knowledge from Step 1 will allow you to assess and quantify the impact of your offering within the installed base - in a manner that is meaningful to the target market.

Step 4 - Brand Positioning:
In this step, a compelling brand positioning and strategic messaging is crafted based on a solid understanding of: your market's needs and how they buy, competitive differentiation, the market's buying criteria and pain points, and your ROI-grounded value proposition.

Step 5 - Market Validation:
Before you commit your marketing budget to the new market communications package, it's important to test your new strategic with your target market. Online surveys and online focus groups are quick, accurate and affordable methods to reach the target market without geographic limitations and enabling you to test multiple brand strategies and positioning statements, to hone and optimize the final marketing product.