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Understand the six critical constituencies that most influence your brand: clients, prospects, employees, partners, industry influencers, and investors.
Assessment Overview
No matter how large or small your brand investment,
developing a comprehensive understanding of how your brand is perceived
is essential to business success. Understanding how each of the following
groups views your brand enables you to target marketing investments
where they are needed most.
- Clients. How do your clients perceive your strengths and weaknesses
vis-à-vis key competitors?
- Prospects. Which attributes do prospects
value most when evaluating you and your competitors?
- Employees.
How do employees view company strengths and weaknesses? How well
do they
deliver on your brand promise?
- Partners. How do partners perceive
your strengths and weaknesses in relation to their other partners?
How well do they represent your brand?
- Industry Influencers. How do key journalists, industry analysts, and other experts really
view
your company? How do they compare you with key competitors?
- Investors. How do investment firms, financial analysts, and fund
managers
view your firm? How are their actions affecting your market position?
Assessment Benefits
ITSMA’s 360° assessment allows you to:
- Identify current strengths, weaknesses,
and opportunities
- Improve the impact of existing campaigns
- Test
new positioning initiatives
- Create a baseline from which to measure
future
improvements
ITSMA
IN ACTION: HITACHI CONSULTING
In 2000, Hitachi, Ltd.
entered the business and IT consulting market by acquiring the
IT consulting
arm of Grant Thornton, LLP. Three years and four acquisitions
later, Hitachi decided to rebrand the growing consultancy to
spur greater growth and profitability. To help them with the
process, they turned to ITSMA.
ITSMA’s first priority was to conduct a 360° brand assessment to identify how
key constituents perceived both the consulting brand and Hitachi’s global brand.
ITSMA then developed messages and marketing recommendations to make sure that
the consultancy’s new name and brand would resonate with the market.
The rebranding
proved extremely successful. Using the newly-developed messages, supporting
pillars, and proof points from ITSMA, the company introduced the
Hitachi Consulting name
and brand. Over the course of the following year, Hitachi Consulting:
- Tripled its brand awareness with key stakeholders
- Quadrupled
the amount of analyst
coverage it received
- Drove a 25% increase in revenues from Fortune
100 companies
- Increased its overall revenue by nearly
20%
“Our successful rebranding as Hitachi
Consulting has been a cornerstone of our growth. Working with ITSMA
during that critical process was a key determinant of our success.” —Michael
Travis, President and COO,
Hitachi Consulting |
Beyond Awareness and Preference
Many firms measure basic
brand awareness and preference with clients and prospects Such measures
are certainly useful, but a more in-depth approach to brand research
and analysis can provide important insights that can support immediate
refinements to key marketing and sales activities.
ITSMA's 360º Brand Assessments include three innovative tools to help firms
dig deeper into brand analysis and increase the impact of their brand research
investments.
Market Positioning Guide
ITSMA's Market Positioning Guide plots the
perceived strengths and weaknesses of a group of firms in different
markets.
The Market
Positioning Guide shows how your firm stacks up against competitors
in different markets, thereby lending clear graphic evidence to support
new investments
in marketing for specific capabilities and markets.
The Guide can be
used to plot
relative positioning in vertical markets as well.
Brand Investment
Matrix
ITSMA's Brand Investment Matrix maps the attributes clients or
prospects consider most
important in a services provider against their assessment of
how firms are performing in those attributes.
Understanding client priorities
helps you construct
specific
messages that resonate well with their concerns.
Further, knowing
how
clients perceive your and your competitors' performance enables
you to focus marketing
investments in the most efficient manner.
Brand Equity Index
ITSMA's Brand Equity Index enables companies to construct
a single overall score that integrates a variety of critical brand
data points and then compares that score to those of key competitors.
Metrics
incorporated in the Brand Equity Index can include unaided awareness,
aided awareness, familiarity, favorability toward the firm, and perceived
leadership in different markets.
The Index assigns different weights
to each metric to ensure that the overall score reflects strategic
marketing priorities.
More Information
To learn more about how you can take advantage of ITSMA’s 360º Brand
Analysis capabilities, contact Julie Schwartz,
senior vice president, thought leadership, at +1-781-862-8500,
Ext. 112, or jschwartz@itsma.com.
About ITSMA
ITSMA specializes in helping companies market and sell services and solutions.
As a membership organization, we work with the world's leading technology,
communications, and professional services firms to generate new business, strengthen
customer loyalty, and increase brand differentiation. Through research, consulting,
training, and community we provide the insight companies need to improve marketing
impact, sales performance, and business results. ITSMA is based in Lexington,
Massachusetts, and has offices in the United States, the United Kingdom, and
Japan. Learn more at www.itsma.com.
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