In today’s competitive B2B landscape, standing out isn’t just about having the best product or a persuasive sales pitch. It’s about being the brand that comes to mind when potential customers are ready to buy. This concept, known as mental availability, is a critical component of marketing success and is closely tied to what we call Category Entry Points (CEPs).
In this blog post, we’ll explore what mental availability and CEPs are, how they relate, why they’re essential for your business, and how you can leverage them to grow your brand.
Mental availability refers to how easily your brand comes to mind in a buying situation. It’s about ensuring when a customer is ready to make a purchase, your brand is one of the first they think of. This doesn’t happen by chance; it’s the result of carefully crafted marketing strategies that build and refresh memory structures associated with your brand.
Think of mental availability as the process of embedding your brand into the customer’s memory so that when a relevant situation arises (be it a need, a problem, or an opportunity), your brand is top of mind. The higher your brand’s mental availability, the more likely it is that customers will choose you over competitors when they’re ready to buy.
Not too bad…
Category Entry Points (CEPs) are the specific reasons, triggers, or situations that lead a customer to consider purchasing a product or service within a particular category. CEPs are the cues that bring brands to mind during the buying process. These cues can be internal, like a need or a desire, or external, such as a specific time of day, a location, or an event.
For example, in B2B, a CEP might be “needing a system to manage my projects.” If your brand is associated with this CEP, then when a potential customer faces this situation, your brand is more likely to come to mind, increasing the chances they will choose your product or service.
Mental availability and Category Entry Points are intrinsically linked. To enhance mental availability, a brand must be strongly associated with multiple CEPs. The more CEPs your brand is connected to, the broader and more robust your mental availability becomes.
Consider CEPs as the building blocks of mental availability. Each time a customer experiences a CEP, it’s an opportunity for your brand to be recalled. By associating your brand with a variety of relevant CEPs, you increase the likelihood that your brand will be top of mind in different buying situations.
In the crowded B2B marketplace, mental availability can be the difference between winning and losing a sale. If your brand isn’t coming to mind when potential customers are ready to buy, it’s unlikely they will choose you. Building mental availability is therefore crucial for staying competitive.
Category Entry Points are equally important because they help you understand and influence the specific moments when a customer might think of your brand. By identifying and prioritizing these CEPs, you can tailor your marketing efforts to ensure your brand is the one customers think of in those critical moments.
This is also why more and more practitioners in marketing are talking about branding, demand generation and other long term investments. At any given time, only about 5% of your TAM (total addressable market) will be “in market” and hence susceptible to sales, while the remaining 95% of your TAM is not - meaning, in order to scale in a controlled manner, you need to figure out how to be relevant to your market while they’re not ready to buy, so when they become ready you’ll be the one you chose.
Anyway, let’s look at an example.
B2B Software Company
Imagine you run a software company that offers project management tools designed to streamline operations and enhance team collaboration. Your target customers could include project managers, team leaders, and executives who oversee large projects. Some relevant CEPs for your business might be:
“Needing to improve team collaboration.”
“Managing a project with remote teams.”
“Scaling up project management as the team grows.”
Let’s say a company is expanding and starting to manage multiple projects across different locations. They then suddenly realize their current project management process is inadequate for coordinating remote teams. Here, the CEP is “managing a project with remote teams” and if your brand has consistently communicated its expertise in solving this specific problem, you are more likely to be top of mind when this situation arises.
By running targeted campaigns emphasizing how your tool can effectively manage remote teams, especially in scenarios where multiple stakeholders need to collaborate seamlessly, you build a strong association between your brand and this CEP. Over time, this association strengthens your mental availability.
If you’re looking to effectively leverage mental availability and CEPs, you can follow these steps:
1. Identify Relevant CEPs for Your Category
Start by understanding the key buying situations in your category. What triggers your customers to start considering a purchase? Use frameworks like the 5 Ws (Who, What, When, Where, Why) to brainstorm potential CEPs that are relevant to your business.
2. Prioritize CEPs That Matter Most
Not all CEPs are created equal. Some will be more valuable for your brand than others. Prioritize CEPs based on factors like relevance, frequency, and competition. Focus on the ones where you can make the most significant impact.
3. Build and Refresh CEP-Brand Links
Once you’ve identified and prioritized your CEPs, incorporate them into your marketing communications. Use advertising, content marketing, and sales messaging to consistently link your brand with these CEPs. Remember, building mental availability is an ongoing process, so regularly refresh these associations to keep your brand top of mind.
4. Measure and Optimize
Track the effectiveness of your CEP-focused marketing efforts. Are customers recalling your brand in the desired situations? Use metrics like mental market share, mental penetration, and network size to measure your brand’s mental availability and adjust your strategy as needed.
In B2B, purchasing decisions are often complex and involve multiple stakeholders. Hence, by understanding and leveraging mental availability and Category Entry Points, you can position your brand to be the go-to choice when your customers are ready to buy.
Building mental availability isn’t a one-time effort, though - it requires continuous attention and refinement. By strategically linking your brand to the right CEPs, you can ensure that your brand is not just present in the market but is a dominant player in the minds of your customers.
Remember, the brand that gets remembered is the brand that gets bought.
Do you want to get tips and tricks on how to gain even more from your B2B sales & marketing activities?
Then reach out to me on email, kh@profoundnorth.com, or by phone, +45 28 88 12 62.
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