More precisely: when our potential customers express their needs, we should already be in their minds.
Category entry points: the gateways to our daily lifeworld
Research by the LinkedIn B2B Institute and the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute defines category entry points as triggers that, when a need arises, lead us to remember a certain brand.Category entry points are “the cues customers use to access memories when faced with a buying situation. These cues are both internal, such as motives and emotions, and external, including location and time of day”.
CEPs should be conceived as separate from specific goods or services: they “are not about the brand, they’re about the buyer,” according the report’s author Professor Jenni Romaniuk, associate director at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute.
They are personal or contextual factors that, in a situation of need, can bring to mind a certain brand.
“Strong brands are not built on clicks, but on memories”
Due to one of their typical professional biases (and in order to justify sizable investments in digital ads...), many marketers focus on the bottom of funnel, where clicks and leads drive sales.But a brand's fate depends to a large extent on what happens first, at the top of funnel.
At this stage people begin to seek an answer to their (explicit or latent) needs.
At this stage brands must be ready and already present in the minds of potential customers.
But this only happens if, over time, brands have already positioned so as to associate their products and services with people needs.
All of this comes from a consistent and long-term endeavor: “strong brands are not built on clicks, but on memories”.
Woolly reasoning? Let's clarify it with two examples
A friend of mine told me a while ago that he wanted to enroll in an online university to get the credits needed to teach in high school.In that case, the category entry point was the memory of a chat with another friend of ours, who months earlier had told him about her positive experience with a well-known online University.
That memory, along with the several University's brand campaigns, brought my friend to their website, until he filled out the form and registered.
Another example: months ago I suddenly had to buy a new computer.
Where to go?
I didn't need any online research: personal factors (the positive memory of devices used at work) and contextual ones (the proximity of a store) guided my choice.
The most important search engine is our brain
Either way, online searches and clicks came later (or didn't come at all!).First, the research took place in our memory: being at the top of people minds is more valuable than being at the top of search pages.
Plus, even when searching online, we rarely walk blind, but usually we already have a few brands in mind.
According to Professor Jenni Romaniuk again, “a category buyer first draws on existing memories to identify potential brands for purchase”.
“These memory-generated brands are the starting point for the buying process. Other sources and search engines (eg Google, colleagues) are usually only consulted if the memory-generated options are insufficient. And, even when consultation does occur, buyers still show a bias for the brands they already know.”
According to research, this approach yields tangible results in terms of both customer acquisition and customer retention; and there are specific KPIs to measure mental availability.
In the US insurance sector, for example, each additional category entry point a customer links to a brand in their memory lowers the probability of defection by 5%.
“That single number alone is worth billions of dollars in marketing value,” according Jon Lombardo, global head of research from the LinkedIn’s B2B Institute.
A 4-step roadmap to Brain Engine Optimization
According to Marketing Week, just as we optimize our messaging for search engines, we should optimize it for people.A 4-step process:
1) Identify the relevant CEPs for your category
In the example above, some possible CEPs are:I need the course credits required to teach art history
I prefer a fully self-paced online course
I need help with all the paperwork
2) Prioritize the right CEPs for your brand
CEPs are potentially countless: we have to choose the most prominent ones - without overdoing! Possibly between 3 to 5.We should choose:
- CEPs really considered by our target
- CEPs easily to be associated with our brand
- CEPs able to make us stand out from the crowd
3) Build (and refresh) links between your brand and the CEPs
At this point, we need to link the selected CEPs to our value proposition; and then make these links the cornerstone of our long-term communication strategy.We should go beyond the usual stale words (reliability, authority, integrity...) and satisfy real needs.
Back to our example: through all its messages, our online University is committed to guarantee all the necessary credits; organize self-paced courses; take care of all paperwork.
4) Measure the effectiveness of your CEP-building efforts
The research also intends to measure mental availability by detecting the mental market share, namely the brand’s share of customer entry point-brand linkages in its category.A new brand positioning in the era of Brain Engine Optimization
With this in mind, the traditional brand positioning must be rethought: pinpointing the distinctive traits that make us unique and valuable is essential but not enough.We need to understand the everyday lifeworld and motives of our clients, as well as their DMUs; and then plan ahead, overseeing these territories and imprinting our brand in their minds.
“Understanding how we build powerful brands is actually about understanding how we build powerful memories and associations”.
But this requires a systematic approach: we must regularly associate our brand with strategic CEPs.
If we wanted to build (or rebuild) a brand based on strong mental associations, we could follow this framework:
1. Consistent brand assets
2. expressed in a variety of different ways
3. creatively
4. and distinctively
5. leveraging pre-existing memories and associations
In our example:
1. The online University conveys consistent long-term messages
2. through different shades and channels, both online and offline
3. with a pinch of creativity to hit their audience and engage them
4. highlighting their added value and the differences from competitors
5. and exploiting common needs, feelings and cliches affecting their market
Net of countless other factors, all of this could help establish a solid and trustworthy brand identity in the people minds.
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