In marketing, perception means a lot. Everything, really. What your audience perceives of your company, product, service, competitors or category is FACT. This is not a revolutionary thought, yet it seems far too many folks rely on second-hand, what-we-think-they-think information as the basis for brand management. Get the facts (perceptions) and you can unlock a universe of valuable information to help you make more confident and insightful decisions about your brand.

Wow, what your audience will tell you.

Powerful, applicable marketplace information is right there in the minds of your audience for the taking. And boy, it can tell you a lot. Like how to change your message, where to get an edge on competitors, what your next product should be and how to allocate your marketing budget next year. The key to getting to these types of answers is to conduct an independent perception study that takes a multi-dimensional approach. It’s easiest to think of such a study in three functional layers:

Perception of your brand. Finding out what your audience perceives of your brand is the core information, the baseline for benchmarking your brand and the right place to start. You think you’re an innovator, they think so, too. Your message is getting through.

Comparison in relation to competitive alternatives. Now things get more interesting. Understanding how your audience perceives you versus your competitors on key business or brand characteristics suddenly gives you a measurably clearer picture of vulnerability and opportunity. Competitor not seen as particularly innovative? Just what you thought.

Measurement against expectations in key areas. It’s one thing to learn perceptions, quite more to understand expectations. Expectations are the context for understanding relevance in areas important to your business or category: Price, responsiveness, flexibility, support, et al. With this information, you can triangulate information against any or all of the input to determine how meaningful it is. Customers in the space don’t expect your industry to deliver innovation? Perhaps it’s time to rethink strategy.

Looking for the best way to benchmark the current and ongoing effectiveness of your marketing efforts? Tap the most powerful minds in your organization: your audience.