What in the world do we mean by your brand’s SQ? No doubt you’ve heard of I.Q (Intelligence Quotient) and perhaps even E.Q (Emotional Quotient / Intelligence). Now a high IQ doesn’t necessarily translate into anything meaningful in life – fortunately or unfortunately depending. But a high EQ? Then you also likely have better job performance, enhanced leadership leadership skills and even increased overall mental health. So developing your EQ can actually make you a better employee, a better manager, a better parent and give you a better overall perspective on life.
Excellent. But what about the SQ at hand?
At The Matchstick Group, we believe that just as it is important to develop your personal EQ, the same could be said of your brand’s Strategic Quotient or SQ.
FOUR THINGS MARKETERS SHOULD CONSIDER AS PART OF THEIR BRAND’S STRATEGIC QUOTIENT
The here and now of where you are
You know that saying, you won’t get where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been? That’s so important when it comes to the marketing of med device and med-tech. The clockspeed of innovation is usually such that you could be launching a ‘next generation’ product in the next six months to a year. So clearly defining where you are right this minute is critical.
Brand vision
And equally as important is a clear picture of where your brand is going. The strategy at launch is often reflective of what’s going on in the market at that moment. However, in order to optimize a product or portfolio launch, teams really need to understand not just where the market is now, but where it’s going in the next 2-3 years. Only by understanding potential future states can companies proactively develop and shape the landscape to optimize their products success.
Brand vector & velocity
Once you’ve identified understand your brand’s vision, how are you going to get from where you are to where you want to be? What direction will you take and how quickly do you need to move? If you’re launching a new product for instance, are you launching it into an existing category or creating a new category? How much market development needs to be done and by when?
By working through the brand’s Vision and then mapping out the Vector and Velocity, you can really set the stage to increase your overall Strategic Quotient and make the biggest impact on the market as efficiently as possible – and as we all know – time is money!
At The Matchstick Group, one of the ways we help companies do this is by conducting what we call our 3-V Planning Workshop: Vision, Vector & Velocity. We help our clients uncover the primary drivers in the market from a macro (social, economic, political) and from a more micro (competition, hospital/rep relationship, procedural rate increase / decrease, reimbursement). And then as a function of those micro and macro factors, we can help them identify the vision and positioning for their brand that sets them up for success. From there we look at where we (and the market) are currently in order to understand the Vector (direction) and Velocity (speed) that we need to shape the market we’re competing in.
