Market Conditioning — a healthcare term that all startups should know.
Written by Ana Marshall, Managing Partner of Silicon Drive and Communications at Gunderson Dettmer.
I recently went through a proof-tested brand exercise called “Category Design.” Here’s a synthesis to see if you’d like to read further.
Category Design (redefined) is a 10–12 week process to bring together the greatest minds from your company to decide on a long-term strategy and vision that will dominate your category.
I saw first-hand the power of category design during a client engagement that would help catapult the company before its IPO. The idea that this single brand sprint could change the entire trajectory of a company seemed a little skeptical. The key question that category design asks is — Using theories of brain science, can you change the way your brand is perceived in the market?
Getting started with Category Design (CatD) — When a company first embarks on a brand refresh or a complete rebrand, consider the number of workshops, exercises, mini retreats put into place that are meant to explore your mind and imagine the most outrageous possibilities. Teams bond with their teammates to have open conversations and debates and step into a world to singularly focus on the problem to visualize the opportunities. These are early morning sessions for some and late night for international team members that are small sacrifices in order to contribute the energy and commitment necessary for the process. Even before you get to the hard part of deciding to embark on this rigorous exercise, many companies are automatically eliminated because of this detail alone.
There seem to be 3 stages to this somewhat magical (mag·i·cal /ˈmajək(ə)l/: beautiful or delightful in such a way as to seem removed from everyday life) CatD exercise — Defining Your Category, Customer Journey Mapping, Market Conditioning Strategy. To many marketers, this means a f*ck ton of things. To CatD Designers, it only means 3 things:
1. A purposeful and intentional message and positioning
2. A carefully developed process
3. A way to get into your soul, if you let it
Defining Your Category
This first step isn’t for everyone. The grueling effects of uncovering the unknown when you’re sitting too close to the sun can be difficult. It feels like marketing voodoo magic (some CEO’s call it bullshit to my face, but I don’t mind). It’s like facing your worst fears and denying the white elephant in the room in order to make meaningful change. Even worse, it brings out the real feelings of the more boisterous minds on the team and keeps others quiet.
Defining your category not only highlights your clear value and differentiation, but it is also followed by creating behavior and mental change in the minds of the market and especially disbelievers. These non-believers come from the market, your internal team, competitors, even customers who are uncertain about their decision to continue their work with you. Cutting out a piece of the market to create your own category is extremely difficult because it requires a strong team, a unique product, and a belief to change mindsets. Simple in theory, difficult in execution.
There are three important team catalysts to making category definition effective - The Optimist, the Realist, and the Antagonist.
The Optimist for change is usually the champion from the beginning. This person is typically the CEO or lead marketer, and sometimes, it comes from HR because of their innate character profile to communicate and see the silver lining. Optimists are not always the immediate change maker, but they influence and listen with intent to move a group. The key to this person or people is their ability to believe when change happens, it will be carried through to its full manifestation. They support to inspire in order to complete the mission and can offset much of what the antagonist will contribute.
The Realist is a stronger intellect of the group that can be a market expert and can see all sides of the argument to creating the category. They face day-to-day problems with vigor and are interested in change, but not just for the sake of change. Their articulation of the category problem and how to craft a narrative comes from experience and understanding the opportunity of the future. A realist will challenge the optimist to reconsider their bright, sunny disposition to understand the repercussions of being too unrealistic given market factors, product and engineering team limitations, leadership capabilities. Their goal is not to interfere with the process but to get to the heart of the problem with robust conversation, and will refuse the first solution thrown out to the group.
The Antagonist is typically one or a few who have been grinding it out for the last several months, inset by frustration, and aren’t really sure how this “category” is going to make a difference in their lives. They are some of the loudest of the group who focus on the now rather than the future. And their opinion is one of the reasons why category definition can be so challenging but imperative to the process. Antagonists can show why a narrative or proposed differentiation won’t work because they, too, are market experts and are frontline to the frustrations plaguing a company. Their role is not to interfere with the process consciously, but they are unwilling to change without a fight. At the end, their voice and position are powerful, and if you’re able to realize it’s for the good of the process, defining your category will net stronger output.
Customer Journey Mapping
This version of the customer journey roadmap is a conceptual step-by-step game plan. An in-depth breakdown of the customer journey creates a roadmap for immediate tactical deliverables as you’re defining and approving your Category. Developing the customer journey roadmap is a challenging but refreshing exercise because it’s exactly how it sounds a strategic, communication roadmap to help your team move into the overall market conditioning strategy. Any seasoned marketer should have this in their toolbox, if only to make sure they’ve captured the entire lifecycle and basic steps towards defining content and imperatives. In addition to defining each phase on where you meet your customer, the customer journey map identifies: goals, questions being asked at that stage, content topics that address questions, channel distribution, keyword themes.
One key tip to creating a successful customer journey is don’t do it alone. With each roadmap, I collaborated with the CEO, sales, and other top key stakeholders who were intimate with the customers. This made the output more robust and more valuable by taking in different perspectives on how to view and get in the minds of customers. It also provided a baseline of where to concentrate your initial efforts. As a point of reference, when you’re planning a go-to-market (GTM) launch, then you may focus your efforts on the awareness and interest phases. If you’re a legacy product who needs to re-evaluate where the pit falls are in your customer journey, perhaps it’s the understanding and trial phases that need higher attention.
One key tip to creating a successful customer journey roadmap is don’t do it alone.
As an example, I led this exercise with a newly launched product that needed a lot of focus on the awareness phase. The company was receiving some inbound sales calls from potential customers, but when we tested mass messaging in the market, the return was terrible. We recognized these gaps and closed in on the first content pieces that would build our awareness. We also outlined 1–2 key initiatives and content pieces across Decision and Loyalty to ensure we could close potential customers immediately and move them into a close. With this plan, we could easily go back to the drawing board, ask new questions, and develop new topics that would more closely identify to key customers.
As you are developing the initial beginnings of your customer journey roadmap, be sure to keep coming back to it over the span of a minimum 7–10 days and high collaboration with stakeholders and strategy drivers. Imagine this process leads to long-term strategy and game plan, it shouldn’t be done in 1–2 days.
Market Conditioning Strategy
Here’s the big lift. The market conditioning strategy is a comprehensive look at your last 6–7 weeks of work and applying creative ideas, campaigns, and tactical strategies that bring the entire category design process to life. This is where pragmatism is important because you can’t fake what you’re saying.
Here are the key sections for your market conditioning strategy:
- Key Findings of the category problem
- The Role, Goal and Metrics of the marketing conditioning strategy
- Defining the Why of the strategy
- Key Content Pillars (derived from the customer journey matrix)
- Strategic Imperatives
- Phased Approach
This is where pragmatism is important because you can’t fake what you’re saying.
Key Findings
Think of key findings as the moment to bridge all of the research and data from workshop interviews and surveys with mastermind expertise and creative genius. It’s not simply a regurgitation of what people told you, rather it reaches for the insights and meaning: what they pay you the big bucks for.
Role, Goal, Metrics
Clearly articulate why the marketing conditioning strategy is important with the role it plays. You just went through 2–3 months of grueling category work, why sell yourself short with not explaining the importance of the launch and next steps. This is also the opportunity to outline how you plan to measure outcomes, set expectations and goals.
The Why
Want your company to follow you along this journey? Give them a reason why. There are a number of constituents whom were not included in the process, and they need to identify how this strategy is going make their jobs better, how it’s going to make their life better, and give them a purpose to follow. Make sure that’s clear.
Key Content Pillars
Think of these as your message themes for the next 3–4 quarters. These could be tied to company initiatives, but more importantly, they will map to your biggest pain points which is how you uncovered the category. If you need to spend more time on the understanding phase versus awareness, then one of your themes need to link to achieving this goal.
Strategic Imperatives
Strategic imperatives is my new, favorite term. These are not only business strategies critical to the health and longevity of your company, these are shifts in your business that are, in some ways, non-negotiable. If we set out to change mindsets, change the way we approach our industry, then strategic imperatives are the written promises to those shifts.
Phased Approach
Developing a phased approach allows your teams to bite off enough of the new direction while keeping the train moving. Large directional shifts can be difficult to digest, especially for the high percentage of your workforce that is probably allergic to change. Applying clear goals and metrics to this phased approach will also uncover gaps or points where you need to adjust and redirect so people can actually achieve success. Remember the work building up until now should not die in vain because you want it done, and want it done now. This is where the marathon really begins.
And now here’s the secret
Commitment to change is the most important part of this whole process. Along the way you’ll know if it’s wrong or feel it’s the wrong direction, and there are moments for course correction to ensure you’re on the right path. Most of the antagonists will ask for market research, and that’s a valid request. If research dollars are in your budget, then go for it. There are wide variations of research that can get your proof point — don’t mention that to those deep data analysts. But in truth, brands are at different stages, and the stakes mean different levels of commitment, so don’t be afraid to work around your constraints. The fact that you made it through 8 minutes of reading is a perfect start.
Silicon Drive is a high performance marketing and creative team for early stage startups and corporate brand teams. We take companies to the next level.
