Brand Tracking Workshops
Brand tracking workshops: do you need one?
A brand tracking workshop is a session, run by Vision One before a tracker starts or between waves, that uses focus groups with your customers and a working session with your team to agree what the tracker must measure: objectives, distinctive brand assets, category entry points, positioning and competitors, so the questions are right before the first wave.
If you are in the early years of your brand, you have probably not done much research and do not yet fully understand your brand. If you have grown for years, you may be finding that the brand is running out of steam. Either way, a workshop is the quickest way to prepare for brand tracking.
WWhy you need a brand tracking workshop
Brand tracking is one of the most significant ongoing research investments a business makes. If you are starting out, you quickly discover that the hardest part is knowing what to focus on. Survey time is precious, so you need to know exactly what to ask and how, while still capturing what your customers think and need. That is why Vision One’s brand tracking services include optional brand development workshops: a short piece of qualitative work that sets the tracker up to succeed.
Why is it important to get your brand research questions right first time?
- The questionnaire must stay focused on the brand measures it is meant to capture, and those measures should come from your brand strategy, not from whoever shouted loudest in the briefing.
- Brands early in their journey may not yet have fully formed brand assets or plans. A workshop helps inform and resolve those issues before you launch a campaign or a tracking programme.
- The most common mistake is allowing constant tweaks to the questions. Every change breaks the comparison between waves and hides the trends the tracker exists to find.
- Inconsistent data loses credibility and value inside the business. There are usually many stakeholders, and a workshop is where their expectations are heard, managed and written into agreed objectives.
This article covers what happens in a workshop, who should be in the room, and the two themes we return to most often: Distinctive Brand Assets and Category Entry Points. It ends with the ways focus groups improve brand tracking research and the questions we are asked most.
What happens in a brand tracking workshop
Vision One’s brand workshops are built around focus groups: small groups of carefully recruited customers and prospects, led by a trained moderator with a discussion guide, so the conversation stays on the brand questions that matter. Groups run in a viewing facility, at a central location or, increasingly, online over Zoom or Teams, and your team can watch and feed in questions as the sessions run. The findings then come back to your marketing team in a working session, where the tracker brief is agreed.
A typical workshop programme covers five things:
- Objectives. What the business needs the tracker to answer, in one page, and which decisions the numbers will inform. Everything else is tested against this.
- Brand strategy and positioning. Where you want the brand to sit against competitors, so the tracker measures the perceptions you are trying to move, not just the ones that are easy to ask about.
- Distinctive brand assets. Which logos, colours, straplines, characters and sounds customers actually link to you, and which belong to the category or a competitor.
- Category entry points. The needs and occasions that bring people into the category, and which of them your brand is currently thought of for.
- Competitors and audience. The competitor set every metric will be read against, and the audience definition the sample must match wave after wave.
The output is a tracker brief: agreed objectives, a shortlist of assets and entry points to measure, a competitor set and an audience definition. From there the questionnaire is written, the first wave runs and the questions stay fixed, because the thinking was done before the fieldwork rather than during it.
Who brand tracking workshops are for
Workshops are optional, and not every brand needs one. They earn their place in three situations. First, a brand that has never tracked and is unsure what it should measure; a workshop replaces guesswork with customer language and a shortlist. Second, an established brand whose growth has slowed and whose team suspects the brand means something different to customers than it does internally. Third, a brand about to relaunch, reposition or enter a new market, where the assets and entry points are about to change and the tracker must be ready to measure the change.
The people in the room are the marketing lead who owns the brand, the insight or research manager who will run the tracker, and anyone whose budget depends on the results. If you are weighing up brand tracking training or a brand tracking course for your team, a workshop on your own brand does the same job with a direct output: a tracker you can defend to the board. If you are still learning the basics, start with our free brand tracking guide.
DDistinctive Brand Assets (DBAs)
Distinctive Brand Assets have come to the fore in recent years, driven by the publication of books such as How Brands Grow by Byron Sharp and Building Distinctive Brand Assets by Jenni Romaniuk, both from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute.
DBAs create shortcuts in consumers’ minds that make brands more memorable and more effective. In a workshop we test which of your assets customers recognise without the brand name, which they attribute to the right brand, and which they confuse with a competitor. Those three measures (fame, uniqueness and attribution) become tracker questions.
- They significantly improve the chances of advertising being recalled and standing out.
- They help your marketing grab attention online, in store or wherever it is seen.
- They make all your brand communications look and feel coherent, even when the executions are very different.
- They help you form mental connections with your category and market, so the brand comes to mind when the need does.
Your logo is usually your most important asset, but the list can include straplines, colours, packaging, symbols, words, fonts, celebrities and music. In short, Distinctive Brand Assets get a brand noticed faster and improve the return on marketing investment, which is why the workshop decides which of them the tracker should follow.
Category Entry Points (CEPs)
Category Entry Points are one of the main building blocks of mental availability. They capture the thoughts shoppers have as they move towards a category purchase: the need, the occasion, the trigger that makes a brand come to mind.
By identifying the key entry points for your brand and for the competition, we can evaluate how well brand marketing is growing and strengthening the link between each entry point and your brand, and track it wave by wave.
What are Category Entry Points?
CEPs are a relatively new term in marketing, but seasoned researchers will recognise them as needs. Needs can be functional features and benefits (cup holders in a car, memory in a phone) or usage occasions (parties, breakfast, on the go). A workshop is the fastest way to list them in customers’ own words, because a survey can only measure the entry points you already thought to ask about. We believe most brands should focus on owning an aspect of the category as completely as they can, and the tracker then measures whether they do.
How focus groups improve your brand tracking research
Qualitative workshops and focus groups help brand owners in many areas beyond the questionnaire. These include:
Brand Archetypes
Take our Brand Archetype Quiz for a first view of your brand’s personality. Focus groups then test whether customers see the same archetype, and finesse it before it goes into the tracker as image statements.
Brand Positioning
Most marketers believe brand positioning is the most important facet of a brand. Understanding where you sit against competitors is difficult from the inside, and groups are often the best way to see it as customers do.
Competitor Evaluation
Brand owners rarely have an objective view of their competitors. Groups unravel competitors’ weaknesses and the opportunities they leave open, which then shape the competitor set in the tracker.
What you leave with: agreed objectives, a shortlist of distinctive assets and category entry points to measure, a competitor set and an audience definition, written up as a first-wave brief. From there, brand tracking runs on the right questions from wave one. To talk through a workshop for your brand, use the form below or call +44 (0)203 693 3150.
Brand tracking workshops: FAQs
What is a brand tracking workshop?
A brand tracking workshop is a facilitated qualitative session run before a tracker starts, or between waves, to agree what the tracker should measure. Vision One’s workshops use focus groups with your customers plus a working session with your team, and produce a brief covering objectives, distinctive brand assets, category entry points, competitors and audience.
Who should attend a brand tracking workshop?
The marketing lead who owns the brand, the insight or research manager who will run the tracker, and the people whose budgets depend on the results, such as the heads of advertising, product or sales. Keeping the group small and senior makes it easier to agree objectives that will not be reopened once the tracker is live.
Do I need a workshop before I start brand tracking?
No. Workshops are optional. They are worth it when you are unsure what to measure, when your brand assets or positioning are still forming, or when growth has slowed and the team suspects the brand means something different to customers than it does internally. If your objectives and metrics are already clear, you can go straight to the first wave.
Can the workshop use our existing tracker data?
Yes. For brands that already track, the workshop starts from the current results: the focus groups explore why awareness, consideration or image scores are moving, and the team session decides what to change, what to add and, just as importantly, what to keep fixed so that the data stays comparable wave on wave.
How long does a brand tracking workshop take?
It depends on scope. Focus groups are scheduled as separate sessions with recruited customers, in a viewing facility, at a central location or online, and the team working session follows once the findings are in. We agree the format, the number of groups and the dates with you when we scope the work, and you will usually have a brief before fieldwork for the first wave is booked.
How much does a brand tracking workshop cost?
Workshops are quoted as a fixed price, scoped to the number of focus groups and the audience you need, and are usually proposed alongside the tracker itself. A first UK brand tracker with Vision One starts from around £8,000, quoted fixed before work begins, and the workshop is added only if it will change what the tracker measures.
What is the difference between a brand workshop and brand tracking training?
Training teaches a team how brand tracking works in general. A workshop applies that thinking to your own brand, with your customers in the room, and leaves you with a tracker brief rather than a certificate. If your team needs both, the workshop usually covers the basics as it goes; our introduction to brand tracking guide fills in the rest.
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