Background
To stay ahead in a fiercely competitive industry, a global tax and audit consultancy wanted to set up an annual brand awareness tracking program. The firm wanted to measure awareness of their brand and how it is perceived in the marketplace, and compare its performance against other industry leaders over time. They also wanted to measure the impact of their marketing initiatives on the perception and performance of the brand and identify key areas for improvement.
Our Approach
Leveraging years of experience in brand research and competitive intelligence, we developed a systematic approach to measure and track awareness of the firm’s brand, brand perception and customer satisfaction rates. We combined this with a study that compared their performance against their leading competitors.
Our approach involved a multi-step process including:
Exploratory phase to gather market context
Discussions were held with stakeholders to gain a comprehensive understanding of the firm’s business needs within the current market context. This included brand perception and the key attributes driving brand awareness and recall, as well as those of their key competitors.
Qualitative research
In-depth discussions were held with subject matter experts (SMEs) within the firm to identify the key research areas which aligned with the firm’s business objectives. From these insights, we developed a comprehensive and effective brand assessment questionnaire for use at the quantitative survey stage.
Quantitative Research
We conducted a comprehensive brand tracking survey using a representative sample of senior leaders in 250 businesses with revenue >$100m, targeting either the decision-makers or influencers in the engagement of professional services firms for their companies.
Analysis
The final step was to analyze the survey data and gather the resulting insights into the following key research areas:
- Awareness of the firm’s services: including external audit, tax, financial advisory, risk consulting and strategy consulting vs. their key competitors.
- Brand familiarity: Level of awareness and understanding of the firm’s services.
- Brand perception: Perception of the firm based on specific attributes including quality of service, industry expertise and know-how, reputation, innovativeness and on-the-ground presence.
- Brand communication, messaging and recall: Presence on marcomm channels, typical brand messaging (theme-based, service-based, client-based, etc.) and recall value (future-focused, innovative, action-driven, proactive, resilient, reliable, etc.).
- Consideration and engagement: Key factors that drive intent to retain the incumbent supplier or select a new one, including whether they are solution-driven, analytical, have a strong global presence, deliver quality insights, or responsiveness.
- Levels of satisfaction and likelihood to recommend based on past experience and engagement with the incumbent firm.
Outcome
- The insights gained from the research helped the firm understand their brand’s performance versus their key competitors, identify areas for improvement and measure the impact of their marketing initiatives.
- Based on these findings, the firm was able to increase their brand recognition and enhance their reputation within the industry. This has led to increased business opportunities and revenues.
