Branding Strategy – Part 2: Know Your Market
So this is Part 2 – Know Your Market, I’m detailing each step from the overview article.
As I have said, even if you think you are defining a new market, it is very rare that an absolutely new market doesn’t already exist. There will be something similar out there, people or organisations who buy or want to buy the product or service you sell.
I use Uber as an example in my book Know Your Onions: Corporate Identity. In reality, the book is about branding, but that is a misused term. With Uber, what appears to be a new market, booking freelance drivers through an app, is a ‘new’ offering but the market was already there; people who use cabs. The difference of course is how you book your cab, track your driver and pay. Not to mention the business model.
You can pay for a market research company to do your research for you. But with effort and a little ‘out-of-the-box thinking’, you can do it yourself.
The first thing (and I will mention this again and again), if you are working on your own organisation, leave your ego out of it.
Search any organisation, individual, or social media account (yes they count as well) that operates or comments in the market you want to be in. The deeper the understanding you have, the more intelligence you can gather, the better you will be able to understand what you need to do to penetrate that market.
The key thing is to document in an organised fashion what you find from your research. You can use any framework you like and it will be governed by the organisation or product that you are researching. This framework will fit most things you research.
List the companies that do what you want to do
Describe what their brand says to you, or at best what you think the brand says to the audience. How are they placed in the market? Market leaders? Value/price based? Think about what defines your competition.
Detail what they do well and what they don’t do so well. This could include their branding and identity, any press they may have got (positive or negative), any advertising, and any social media ‘chatter’.
Look at reviews, mission statements, their management structure, and their social media – everything. Don’t just focus on the market leaders; include the smaller organisations or niche products, because these may be the organisations that rise up and take over the market.
Try and devise a matrix to understand the bigger picture. If you sell coffee in central, London, you will have a lot of competitors. Greggs sell coffee, so do Starbucks – how does the artisan coffee shop position itself.
This may sound silly, positioning a coffee shop, but it isn’t. The same applies to any organisation, big or small, new or old.
Positioning
Once you have researched your market, think about positioning. This is a big question that you need to ask yourself because it forms the basis of everything you do. How your identity looks, the way you interact with your customers, what your price point is – everything.
Not every service or product needs to be perceived as premium. Where there’s muck there’s brass, as they say. Organisations often pitch themselves as a premium brand and they are not. Greggs does more business than any Michelin-starred restaurant.
Focus on the biggest market, not what your dreams are. Leave your ego at the door.
If you are performing this task for your own organisation, put in the effort. If you are doing for a client, put in the effort. Do not underestimate how important and informative this process is.
When you know your market and the position in that market, it creates a ‘target for everything. Hit that target and you can really make a difference in how successful your rebrand will be.
I did a positioning process for every book I have written. It is important because there are so many books on design, branding, identity – on the market – what makes mine different and why would you buy it?
It helps when communicating to a client their market position to create some form of a diagram. This illustrates visually where your product or service sits against a matrix that applies to your market. Below is an example.
It may seem obvious on the face of it, but you would be amazed how many organisations don’t really know where they sit. An organisation’s age or gravitas can alter how they are perceived in the market – it’s not always about price or service level. Think about Gucci and Moschino, both are high-end fashion houses but with very different brand values and audiences.
Once you have your market research and positioning done, you are a long way down the journey of creating an effective brand or rebrand.
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