Expertise
Insight Identification: Understanding your consumers
What do you really know about your consumers? Is your target audience clearly defined? Great marketing always starts with consumer insights before launching any new brands or campaigns. An insight goes beyond market research – it is a discovery of new knowledge about consumer motivations and barriers that should shape your strategies. Often an “a-ha!” moment, a new insight can be applied to unlock growth and drive business forward.
There are numerous qualitative and quantitative ways to capture consumer insights, but they all help to ensure that your strategies are consumer-driven. Carambola Consulting has used methods such as focus groups, net promoter system implementation, and pricing elasticity studies in its insight projects for clients, which led to greater consumer understanding - and measurable results.
Brand Strategy: Understanding the foundation of your brand, including positioning and competitive differentiation.
What makes you different from your competitors? What is your USP (unique selling proposition)? What are the most compelling benefits that your brand offers consumers? These are just some of the questions you should clarify as a part of your brand strategy development. From target market definition to brand audits to fleshing out your brand positioning statement, it is important to be able to clearly define who you are versus your competitors, especially in a crowded field. How is the brand defined currently in people’s minds, and what would you like them to believe? What problem is your product solving for your audience, relative to their needs and to competitors?
The brand strategy for non-profits might look a little different. What is your vision (the outcomes you’d like to see), and is it aligned with your mission (how you’ll get there)? Who are you trying to reach (defining your key stakeholders), what is the plan to reach them, and with what messages?
What is your brand identity? What symbols and words represent it and brand values? What does your brand stand for (values and personality), and just as important, what isn’t it?
What is your brand purpose and how does that improve the environment, communities, employees, and others? How are you communicating your brand purpose with corporate social responsibility?
We help develop your brand’s strategy in order to develop more compelling, consistent and effective communication to drive results.
Marketing Planning and Execution
Have a strategic plan but not sure where marketing and communications fit in? We can help translate your company or organization’s plan into relevant marketing and communications goals, strategies, and tactics
We can help develop your marketing plan, including:
Development of a multi-year strategy to move from short-term activities towards long-term brand building and growth
Focusing the plan on linking goals to both strategies and tactics and assessing the best channels to execute the plan to drive the business forward
Analysis of activities that bring the most value, being cognizant of existing resources
Digital strategy analysis and execution
Assessing which channels to reach your audience, with the right frequency, is key to strong execution. We can help with a channel analysis and help you determine which are most effective to reach your key audiences.
Messaging Development
Are you challenged to find the right way to communicate out what you do? Does the language you are using resonate with all of your target audiences? Or does the “one size fits all” approach not seem to work anymore when communicating? We can help you craft the most compelling language for different audiences and communication platforms to ensure you are reaching the right consumers at the right time with the right message.
Have you defined your brand purpose? Does your brand purpose align with your brand positioning and what your consumers are seeking? Or, do you need help developing a strong corporate social responsibility campaign and executing it? With experience in defining brand purpose and developing corporate social responsibility campaigns, we can help you craft a compelling and genuine brand purpose that will align with your brand and your consumers.
Training
Are your champions and stakeholders struggling with effective messaging? Do your employees have the right tools to effectively communicate with customers?
If faced with criticism or questions, do your key advocates know how to respond? We’ve trained hundreds of individuals from employees to board members on effective messaging, along with practical tips on how to respond to tough questions about their brands and missions. We will work with you to develop and customize a training that will work to meet your needs.
Marketing Team Structure and Development
Do you know what roles are necessary for your marketing and communications teams to be built out properly with the resources you have? Or do you think you need outside agency help, but aren’t sure how to select an agency and develop the right scope of services? We can help you build out your marketing and communications functions with job descriptions, hiring, and orientation, and help you determine which functions should be in-house vs. outsourced.
If you think you need an agency partner, but “don’t speak marketing,” we can help you in the process to select the right partner(s) and structure their scope of services properly along with best practices on partnership and agency management.
Services include:
Team structure analysis and recommendations for roles
Hiring and orientation for new marketing executives
RFP management for agency selection
Scope development for agency management