Think

The key piece of the Marketing and Communications process that is tempting to overlook.

The 'Think' element is where we work with you to pause, review and set objectives, to help identify audiences and then support the creation of specific audience outcomes.

This is often a hard thing to achieve without outside help. The demands of the day-to-day and the close proximity to the product and service make it difficult to take the time and space for an objective view.

There are several ways in which we can support you to think deeply about your marketing and communications objectives.

Qualitative Market Research

One to one interviews, focus groups and desk-based research. Understand what who the audience are, what they need and how they think of existing products or services.

Audience Mapping

A clear appraisal of who they are, where they are, how they're defined and how they can be reached.

Brand Development

Determining 'what they say about you after you've left the room'. This isn't about logos and identity.

Offer Development

Defining how the product or service meets the audience need.

Content Marketing development

Determining the type of content that is compelling to the audience and heightens awareness of your offer. Guided by the McKinsey 'Customer Decision Journey' model.

Marketing audits

Assessment of capability and capacity to successfully deliver the plan.

Competitor Analysis

Defining who the competitors are, where they are, what they are doing, how they are doing it and how do they measure up and compare?

Strategy Development

Distinct from 'Planning' this is a process to document how the resources are going to be deployed to reach the objectives. It'll show timescales, areas of responsibility, critical success factors and mitigations.

"A good strategy recognizes the nature of the challenge and offers a way of surmounting it." from 'Good Strategy, Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters.' by Richard Rumelt, Emeritus Professor of Business & Society at the University of California, Los Angeles Anderson School of Management.

“Oppidium’s model really helped us to stop and think about exactly who we needed to reach, where they were (organisation, role, location) and crucially, what those people needed from us.

Our purpose is to work with UK Government, industry and the higher education sector to undertake innovative energy focused research, the things we need to communicate can be complex, yet they are crucial. This thinking and planning Oppidium provided has helped define what we need to say and how we need to say it to each group of target audiences.”

Nick King, Marketing and Communications Manager at Midlands Innovation and the Energy Research Accelerator (ERA)