Profound techniques for in-depth business analysis and building a marketing strategy
Each time, to develop robust working solutions for a business, this is preceded by thorough research and analysis. In this article, we will talk about what advanced and versatile tools are available to analyze and make business decisions effectively.
What are they for, you ask?
First, answer yourself one question. How many brands have you seen that have become successful? Which ones have a strong image and a loyal audience? And how many brands have a working structure and management?
Unfortunately, a lot of brands fail, and few become industry leaders. To prevent this, it is still worth doing analytics and research.
The tools listed here allow you to “analyze” the brand and look into its essence, find relationships and insights, and thus find a potent solution for business development.
Like a SWOT, only better
When assessing the company’s position and determining the right direction of development, most companies and managers choose SWOT analysis — a universal tool for evaluating the brand’s strengths and weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
But… we believe that SWOT does not reflect the full picture of the brand, the relationship between the factors, and how this or that threat or opportunity turned out. This limits the company’s ability to make the right decisions.
Therefore, to dive into the brand’s current position in more detail and evaluate the company from the point of view of the internal and external environment, we recommend using such a professional tool as Strategy Explorer. This technique will allow businesses to take a comprehensive look at the brand from the point of view of the impact of various factors of the external and internal environment on it, as well as quickly react to emerging threats.
We will tell you more about how to use this tool in this article.
Consumer care and understanding — why Empathy Map is needed
While working on a brand strategy for the AI ML startup Zytlyn, we implemented a tool like the Customer Empathy Map. This is a great tool that allows you to look deep into the true motives of the consumer, understand their pain, and ask what they think. The model was developed by Dave Gray, founder of strategic consulting company XPlane.
This tool perfectly allows the research group to focus not on projecting their thoughts and needs onto the target audience but on understanding consumers’ pains and motives.
The Empathy Map can be used in completely different scenarios. For example, a product development team can use an empathy map to assess how people might react to a new product. The head of the department can use it to assess his team’s reaction to a new workflow.
The undeniable advantage of the technique is its visibility. The completed template is easy to share, the main meanings are read immediately, and you can quickly identify gaps or contradictions in the processes.
Relationship diagram: Euler Circles
Yes, this point is exactly about such a tool as Euler Circles. It helps to find and verify the relationships between different objects that, at first glance, are completely far from each other.
For example, this method can be used when you want to analyze the market and the environment of competitors and correlate these concepts with your brand. Actually, these three directions define three circles; the most interesting thing lies in their intersection.
Do you and your competitors have something in common? Or maybe it is what a competitor has, and the market needs it, but your brand lacks it? Or you can find the very characteristics that are at the intersection of the circles of “brand” and “market”, but this is not in the circle of “competitors”. Then congratulations, most likely, you have discovered the USP of your brand!
As a result of this analysis, you can find a lot of interesting insights and relationships to determine further strategic steps.
Brand and strategy with Censydiam
Censydiam was created back in the 1980s by the marketing company Ipsos from Switzerland. The company is still one of the leaders in the European advertising market and periodically releases additions and updates to the framework, one of which can be viewed here.
What kind of tool is this?
Censydiam is a classic brand visual mapping framework based on the basic psychological motives of consumers. It is usually used as part of a branding and marketing strategy to identify the semantic niche in which the brand is located.
Censydiam is based on axes reflecting social and individual aspects, taking into account the situational motivations of the consumer. Of course, each person’s personality is unique, but everyone’s fundamental needs are the same.
It helps to find the answer to the question: “Why do consumers buy?”, assuming that a person’s behavior is determined by his subconscious emotional needs.
This tool is convenient to use when you also identify segments of your audience and develop value propositions for it.
The brand’s “Bible”
All the inherent meanings of the brand, brand essence, and attributes that are formed during the creation of the brand strategy should ultimately be clear to everyone who comes into contact with the brand. The brand platform, which is being developed by the strategic business department, is responsible for this and determines the main vector where the company will move in the coming years.
There is a convenient tool for this — this is the brand pyramid.
This template clearly reflects the main components, such as the essence, mission, values, character, reasons to trust, and advantages — this will allow the business to check whether all brand constants are available and which ones need to be developed.
These are the main tools that we use in our work. There are many different tools, but it is important to understand: that it is worth asking the question “Why?” before applying any technique. You need to understand the purpose and task a particular tool meets — only then can you get a worthwhile result!
If you are interested in learning more about the working methods or to consult with us, you can write us a welcome email so we can answer all your questions.