What is Perceptual Mapping?
What is perceptual mapping & does it add any extra value to an organization above & beyond the conventional uses?
Yes, products could be envisioned, conceptualized, developed in a factory if they are physical ones or in an office setting if it were to be for the more ubiquitous digital ones today. But whatever shape, size or form they come in, they may not make the cut if the users don’t seem to be as excited about it or decide to thumb it down for some reason.
So, a product’s success (/ failure) has a lot to do with the perception of the users & undeniably so. Sometimes what could be perceived as great products post the initial validation may go flat for many reasons & at times mediocre products could still have those retention numbers lift off straight up like the trail of a rocket launched towards space.
Much like Dan Olsen mentions about the things one ought to sort out at a very basic level before they could hit PMF, one ought to be totally sorted over their target markets / customers & their respective underserved needs which quite obviously hinges on strategies & initiatives oriented towards proper research & discovery.
When there a number of tools / methodologies out there to get through these 2 steps as of 2024, there is still one of them that has its origins dating back to a few odd decades (1960s to be precise) although very basic but could still rank pretty high in terms of effectiveness & that’s PERCEPTUAL MAPPING.
Definition:
“Perceptual mapping, also known as market mapping or positioning mapping, is a visual representation of how consumers perceive products or brands”
You can visualize a 2D-map as a scatter plot split across four quadrants with the origin (0,0) right at the center & across shooting across all 4 directions with varying attributes. The most important part of the plot is the parameters one chooses to understand the markets & place the competition. When most stop at the 2-dimensional graph with 2 correlative attributes, the multi-dimensional plots which could end up looking more like spatial graphs with each vertex of the polygon representing an individual attribute are not unusual or uncommon.
For ex: mobile phones could be positioned across price & whether or not it is a smartphone with varying degree of features.
Is there a difference between VALUE DRIVERS & a PERCEPTUAL MAP?
Well. There sure is.
It is pretty common to confuse a perceptual map with that of a value driver. Yes, the commonality between the two would be the higher purpose they serve, which is how they help strip the elements out & help teams align over them.
When it could look like one is a mere mirror image of the other to some, the perceptual map has more uses targeting the competition, the other orgs. & products belonging to markets that intersect with that of yours, as opposed to the whole idea of a value driver being more oriented towards helping each & every member / individual of internal teams understand exactly how & what drives the business forward & help bring those revenues in.
Perceptual Map – USE CASES
1. Market Study
The first major use of a map is to help conduct the right amount of market research. When one comes to learn of a competitor doing pretty well in terms of market share, the map could help them dive-in & explore strategies that made those brands via the products they built & launched while also indicating the time it took them to do so.
2. Competitor Strength
What good is knowing who a competitor is? One ought to be able to dig more deeper & glean enough insight into understanding the major factors that contributor to the ROI, help you understand how they got to that market share, decipher a thing or two about their strategy. Yes, it could all look like hindsight when you’re going through the exercise but it could prove to be crucial towards your understanding of the competitor landscape.
3. Major Focus
Building a map could help you build a sharper focus. When you’re building a map & essentially choosing those parameters / variables that matter you are also getting deeper into those backstories, getting to what led to those decisions. Establishing the ground rules of the game via a strategic overview would only lead to a degree of clarification over the magnitude of effort it’d take to firstly get a foot in that door & then stay there at the top.
4. Market Identification
Building a perceptual map would also help you identify your ideal segment vector, the exact bracket that your users lie in at the intersection of the parameters you intend to target or should be targeting given the current market scenario & its future course. Identify a target market this way could help you nip out all the biases & get more practical towards nailing your positioning as well.
5. Marketing Effort
Marketing obviously has a lot to do with getting a lot of things right over the messaging, the positioning & the content strategy. Building one of these maps could also be a great way to understand the ascent to the top towards marking the distance / the gap that lies between you as and when you’re starting to the ones who already have a presence in the market. And that could lead to an estimation of the efforts that the teams would have to put in.
6. UX / CX Improvement
Continuously plotting the map against the parameters that matter & doing it time & again at regular cohorts could also be a great way to get a reality check in as to where one stands as an org. vis-à-vis the competition. Doing so ought to act as a precursor towards understanding what the others are getting right continuously whilst where you are falling behind. And there could be no better way to aid continuous improvement.
7. Team Alignment
Of all the time & effort one puts in towards imparting clarity for internal teams & those individual team members, the perceptual map could act as a moment of truth for many to not only help them understand where the org. / product stands in the market but also get a first-level understanding of the parameters that sets the competition apart & puts them in those positions they currently hold. If that info is leveraged properly it could lead to teams digesting the cause & better alignment all throughout.
Preliminaries to Perceptual Mapping
Here are some steps one ought to remember towards building these maps & using them effectively:
1. Underline the Purpose
The first step is to get a hang of the goal & thoroughly understand the purpose behind building the plot. When the purpose could vary from any of these:
directing marketing teams towards getting a hang of the competitor’s positioning of products over the competitive landscape towards research
helping product teams get a hang of the market’s & their respective products
facilitating a degree of elocution for internal teams & being able to gauge where they stand as for the market today
towards improving customer experience & doing that continually
to perceive the quantum of effort that’d be required to get up to the zenith
2. Choose the Parameters
Given how one org. could have built & launched multiple products which may have led to capturing a share of the market already, the parameters one is choosing towards gauging competition ought to have paramount significance. What is it that makes sense for you to gauge given the competitive landscape you are targeting & the players who already have a presence there:
are you launching a product that fits into the current scheme of things?
(or)
are you looking to disrupt the space entirely?
3. Quantify the Competition
The very fact that you have set a few parameters, have a purpose identified already for yourself & see how the market has a few players ought to lead towards establishing their credibility & how their products seem to have fared over a given period of time. That would not only help in understanding where you stand vis-à-vis the competition but also give you enough information to set or even recalibrate your goals.
4. Visualize the Competition
If you have been a leader in any capacity, to begin with you obviously know how imperative it would be to have all internal teams in alignment & then have something that they can pin on right throughout their journeys. Think of it like gamification for internal teams, they may be all gung-ho about the goals post the first download but that spirit may begin to wane / even fade as time progresses. Preparing something like a gigantic chart / a visual element & hanging it up over a wall that each of your team member’s pass by every day could work like magic & save you from hammering all of it into their heads over & over again.
Also, please remember this:
It is perhaps human tendency (especially common amongst the Millennials & thereof) to do it once & then leave it at that / forget it. When there ought to be no hindrance of a doubt in your mind as to the value adopting to a perceptual map would add to you / your teams / the org. as a whole, the aftermath of adopting it as a de-facto tool to help teams understand where they stand as for the products they built & launched vis-à-vis the markets towards continually aligning & motivating teams could just be seminal, undeniably.