Best practice in brand studies

How aware are your clients of your service offering? How do you stack up against the competition? What levers can you pull to drive more growth?

Senior executives responsible for their firm’s brand strategy recently met with Momentum ITSMA to discuss how to answer these questions through best practices in brand studies. In the first of three blogs, we explore some of the levers our attendees were using to improve effectiveness.

Brand studies serve as a vital tool for aligning brand perception with broader business goals. They support the strategic planning process by providing insights into market positioning and competitive differentiation. But to do this successfully and have impact, a brand study needs to be integrated into an organization’s planning process with engagement at the Board level.

One attendee shared an example of their organization using its brand study to inform organizational restructuring and market repositioning – decisions of critical strategic importance. The roundtable emphasized the importance of using brand studies to identify specific areas for corporate improvement and to build a compelling business case for brand investment to address these issues.

The discussion highlighted the value of employing a mixed-methodology approach to brand research, combining quantitative surveys with qualitative interviews and/or focus groups. This approach allows organizations to capture broad trends and then dig deeper into specific issues, hearing directly from their clients in their own words. 

Research should be conducted with current clients, lapsed clients and prospects (although definitions of all three varied). Lost clients were seen as a fertile ground for insight although attendees recognized the difficulty and sensitivity in reaching them at times. It was also noted that a client that would not agree to a call told you quite a lot! Ideally survey samples should be large enough to give an indication of sector differences – although this could be demanding on budget and resource. 

Most agreed that it is important to assess the competitive landscape as part of the survey and to obtain a view as to where the industry was headed, identifying not just the immediate addressable market but where clients see the industry in five or even 10 years’ time.

Although it varied by industry, most participants at the roundtable conducted brand studies annually. This, they believed, gave their organization enough time and insight to capture market changes and implement strategies accordingly. But this was often supplemented by additional research into a particularly topical theme or significant sector in between the larger brand studies.

The roundtable underscored the importance of translating brand study findings into actionable insights that drive strategic decisions. Participants discussed barriers to leveraging brand study data, such as internal communication challenges and the need to encourage cross-departmental collaboration early in the planning process. 

Interestingly, it was noted that brand studies tend to have a greater impact in organizations where marketing is more influential. So, there is a clear need for marketing to raise its profile, which results in more investment in the brand study, which increases the profile of marketing – a wonderfully virtuous circle! 

The discussion emphasized the need for organizations to improve the way they communicate and distribute insights internally to maximize their impact. There were several examples where attendees had consulted with sales and senior management on the objectives and questions to ask before they started planning their questionnaire – which reduced the chance of sales continually challenging the veracity of findings rather than exploring what they might mean and what action is needed. Using an independent company to run your research will add to the independence of the study, which is clearly hugely advantageous.

Contact sarah.defreitas@momentumitsma.com to learn more about brand tracking and optimizing your brand for long-term success.