Use caseUnderstand category entry points
Collect the situations that lead people to think of your category, from their own recent purchases, then measure which brands they link to each one, with light buyers deliberately in the sample.
An entry point list is built from what people were doing when the need arose, then tested on a sample large enough to show how far each one reaches.
Buyers walk through their last few purchases in the category, when it was, where they were, who they were with and what they needed, and those moments are grouped into a working list of entry points.
Pulse recruits people who purchase in the category only occasionally, alongside heavier buyers, screening each one, because light buyers are the group Ehrenberg-Bass research points to as the main source of brand growth.
A survey then asks a broad sample of category buyers which brands they connect with each entry point, yours and each rival's, giving the counts that mental market share and mental penetration are calculated from.
The world's most ambitious teams research with Pulse.
GrowwMarketing chooses a few situations to own, and the results rank every candidate on how many buyers it reaches and who holds it today.
Where many category buyers name a situation but few link it to your brand, the team can see which rival holds that moment and how far ahead of you it is.
A situation that reaches a large share of category buyers and that no brand clearly owns yet is usually a better bet than one a strong rival holds, so the shortlist of situations to build favors those.
Each situation the team decides to build gets its own brief, naming the need, the buyers who meet it and the rival currently linked to it, so creative work aims at one recognizable moment at a time.
Understand the situations, needs and occasions that bring a category to mind.
The category entry points template
Run this studyThe situations, needs and cues that lead buyers to think of a category are called category entry points, and research on them measures which brands buyers link to each one. It builds on the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute's concept of mental availability: the more buying situations a brand is linked to, and the more buyers hold those links, the more often it comes to mind at the moment of choice. The work begins qualitatively, with buyers describing recent purchases to reveal the triggers behind them, which are grouped into a list of entry points. A survey then asks category buyers which brands they associate with each entry point, producing metrics such as mental market share and mental penetration. Scores are compared with what brand size would predict, since larger brands receive more links everywhere. The result guides marketing toward situations where the brand is under-linked, and the measures are tracked over time.
Heavy buyers name more situations, and name them more often. Grouping entry points by the audience that named them keeps the light buyers' situations visible, so the shortlist the brand builds on reflects the buyers growth depends on.
The agency writing a scene for a chosen situation reads buyers' full accounts of it, what prompted the purchase and what else they considered, so the scene rings true to people who have lived it.
For each chosen situation, the phrases buyers used are grouped and quoted, such as "something everyone at the table will eat." Copywriters then write lines in words buyers already attach to that moment.