Measuring Your Potential to Steal Market Share


All Brands Have Potential to Steal Market Share

Your prospect’s potential attachment to your brand can be measured and understood when you have a complete and clear understanding of the “meaning” that they assign to your brand. Uncovering that meaning is the first step in the process — understanding the implications of that meaning is the second step.

We learn a great deal about the robustness of a brand when we examine it in this way. We can understand the current preference levels, the competitors that are most vulnerable to attack, and predict trends and currents. All of this gathered intelligence data has strategic and tactical implications for all of us. If you do not have this information (and subsequent analysis) at your fingertips you are steering blindly. If your competitors have this knowledge and you don’t’ — you are on the fast track to a major collision and your brand will come out holding short-stick, even if you are currently the runaway market leader.

Knowledge is Different from Information

The idea of information and knowledge are linked — in that the clarity and value of the information you collect about your brand and the competitive market space in which you compete directly effects the value and resulting usefulness of the knowledge you glean. The information you collect is directly linked to the questions you ask. Your marketing strategy would be well served if the same amount of time that went into the analysis of the data were equally spent on the formation of the questions you ask.

When Stealing Share® or Resultant® creates research questionnaires, we spend many weeks creating the research questions. Before the first question is scribed, our strategists have already evaluated the competitive landscape, outlined the major competitors, modeled the behavior of the potential customers we wish to influence, and have hypothesized strategic solutions to the problem. Each of these important steps is necessary because strategic research is different from marketing U&A studies. In U&A studies, marketers are trying to understand how the product (or category of products) is used by the target audience and how they feel about them. Often, an analysis of awareness is included and many times researchers will also probe for what the “brand” means. These studies, made popular by companies with large R&D departments are necessary in helping guide product innovation and change. They are nearly worthless when trying to identify a strategy to take market share from your competitors.

A Preceptive Market Share Study

Preceptive is not a misspelling of perceptive. Precepts are life-organizational beliefs; they are the Magna Charta, Constitution, and Bill of Rights (all wrapped up in one). These core belief systems control everything your potential customer does, needs and wants because they “BELIEVE” them to be true. All of the desires that your customer needs to fill are a result of these core precepts.

Once a precept is adopted as true (there is no need for them to be true, just to believe them to be true is more than enough) the potential customer is compelled to live their life according to them. As brand anthropologists, we are able to use these powerful currents to ignite trial and loyalty of your brand.

It is quite simple to understand. If the customer is already using a competitor’s product or service, then there is no need to convince them of the efficacy of the category. For example, if they use a bank then there is not reason to convince them that using a bank is safe and smart. If they already choose to dine at a restaurant or to stay at a hotel, then there is no reason to convince them that great food or clean and reasonably priced rooms exist. If they currently use an office phone system, there is no reason to convince them that these systems are necessary, reliable, and easy to use. If they currently have an employee health plan, then there is no reason to convince them that the health plan you sell is reliable, flexible, and affordable. In all of these cases, these are examples of category benefits.

Once you understand that category benefits are indeed “table stakes” and are the minimum values needed to compete in any category, you are left looking for reasons for a potential customer to choose your brand. This is where PRECEPTS come into play — and they are more important than claims of effectiveness and product benefit (which are important too). They are important because they represent the fabric of your potential customer and if your brand represents these precepts, its importance is woven into the very fabric of the brand itself. Choosing differently would be akin to choosing a stranger over a family member or the familiar over the alien. It is where preference resides and yet many brands continue to fight for acceptance rather than preference. This is a mistake — acceptance is merely a result of reflecting the category” table stakes” and preference is where your margins reside.

Finding Your Brand’s Niche

This is a complicated subject to tackle in 900 words and if you desire to learn more, have a conversation with one of your brand strategists and they can explain all the nuances and implications of looking differently at your marketing challenges and developing a plan to create a lasting preference at the expense of your competition. For now, it suffices to say that if your brand returns meaning from your customers that represent category benefits or even levels of effectiveness (like best, fastest, and largest) you have danger signals all around you. These are not “brand” attributes (which are emotional and rooted in Precept) but product attributes which can quickly change colors as soon as a competitor is better, faster, or bigger. Training your customers or potential customers to choose in this way is a dangerous step and one that foretells future troubles. Finding the cues to preference is much more nuanced and difficult than understanding usage behaviors. But, it is vastly more powerful and will propel your brand to preference and market dominance.

About Face: The Value of Face-to-Face Meetings


As the business world becomes more impersonal, with automated phone trees and a dizzying amount of online tools, the bond between company and constituent becomes less personal. Increasingly, organizations are utilizing face-to-face meetings to unite with key audiences, communicate their messages and make an impact. As a result, meeting trends are leaning toward a more interactive and personal structure, as illustrated below:

• Incentive Programs
Rather than provide incentive trips to the same top-producing members of their sales force, companies are involving the entire organization by offering team awards that reward R&D, manufacturing and customer support. Incentive programs, traditionally recognized as simply a sales tool, are now considered an important part of brand building and marketing.

• Marketing Integration
As products and services come to market faster, companies cannot wait for year-end marketing meetings or large industry conferences to discuss tactics and strategies. Instead, companies are planning regular meetings and events to discuss and refine marketing plans. As a result, today’s marketing meetings and events are shorter in duration, smaller, more frequent and more focused.

• Return on Investment
As the economy gains ground, companies are spending more on meetings and conferences than in previous years, and a stronger emphasis is placed on ROI gained from meeting budgets. Many companies will “piggyback” meetings as a creative way to maximize meeting expenses. An executive meeting may be held in conjunction with a sales incentive program, allowing senior executives to participate in both. By combining meetings, companies can also leverage better hotel rates and other meeting contracts (transportation, airline, etc.).

• More Substance
Another trend can be defined as “less fluff, more stuff.” Meeting agendas are no longer packed with recreational activities or extended free time; rather, the bulk of the sessions are filled with content and training. Does this mean meetings are becoming lifeless and dull? No, there’s simply more need to place emphasis on finding smart ways to engage audience members with unique activities and team-building techniques that are instructive and fun.

• Clear Messaging
Consider a conference budget wasted if key corporate messages fall flat due to weak presenters, poor clarity or lack of defined expectations. Increasingly, companies are investing in presentation training for executive speakers or hiring professional speakers so that the message delivered is clear, concise and “sticks” with the attendees after the meeting has ended.

• Partner Participation
To underwrite the cost of meetings, companies are relying more heavily on their vendor and partner relationships. Firms are asking partners to sponsor portions of meetings or events, such as a reception or breakfast. This supports both partner and corporate interests; the vendor has the opportunity to get in front of company representatives, while the sponsorship dollars offset meeting expenses.

• Location, Location, Location
Finally, expect more interesting meeting locales. Companies are more often conducting meetings in Asia, Central America and Western Europe, connecting global counterparts and increasing the overall value of the meeting experience.

Do you remember the airline commercial in which a CEO hands plane tickets to each staffer following the loss of the company’s oldest client? Trends in the meeting world reflect a similar theme. While technology is indispensable to businesses, personal interaction, intimate settings and reinforcement of corporate messages and culture are back. Some may call it “old school,” but the companies embracing and leading the new meeting environment are those poised for the most success, internally and externally.