Analytical Tools For Positioning Your Company Strategically & Segmentation Selection

The Avantage®  Application Tools Suite
For marketers who believe in taking an analytical approach to positioning and segmentation this tool suite is for you.  The suite currently consists of three tools available online on a pay-per-use basis:
  1. Avantage Differentation
  2. Avantage Target
  3. Avantage Opportunity Calculator
Avantage Differentiation is a powerful tool that helps companies identify a differential competitive advantage that can serve as the foundation for a positioning platform. The process involves ranking how well competitors and your company perform against key buying or selection criteria. Ideally, you will have conducted research to create the criteria and rankings. In the absence of market research, a small team consisting of representatives from marketing, sales, product management, and customer service can work interactively with the tool to define the criteria and competition based on their experience in the industry.

When completed you will have a clear picture of how your company compares to the competition today, and what you need to do to overcome the competitive threat from an operational and marketing perspective. Envisage Advantage converts competitive strengths and weaknesses into numerical values, creating an important marketing metric known as a Market Value Index (MVI). The MVI is an ideal metric for any marketing dashboard. You can come back to the tool over time to assess your company’s or your product’s competitive progress and change your MVI.

 

Avantage Target enables companies to identify market segments that represent the greatest probability for success. As a part of the tool process, you will establish weight, and rank segmentation criteria and then apply this information to set of selected segments. Ideally, you will have conducted research to help establish the criteria and their significance. In the absence of market research, a small team consisting of representatives from marketing, sales, product management, and customer service can work interactively with the tool to define the criteria and segments.

 

Using the information you provide, the tool scores the segments and then plots the segments against two variables: Opportunity and Accessibility. Segments are then charted you are provided a visual output to help analyze each segment option.

 

Avantage Opportunity Calculator helps sales and marketing management analyze the relative value of market segments and assess their confidence in the segments’ ability to meet business goals. The tools will help you answer the following questions about your current marketing effectiveness:
  1. Will the current market segment support our business goals?
  2. Are we better served by attacking a different market?
  3. Is the project cost for defining different markets justified when compared to the costs being incurred for business as usual?
  4. Do we really know enough about the current market segment to warrant our confidence level in it?
  5. Do we really know enough about the current market segment to warrant the current level of investment?
Be a part of our Pilot. VEM is accepting applications for companies who wish to participate in the Envisage pilot. We are looking for participants from a variety of industries and company sizes. To apply simply send us an email with your name, phone, company name, company URL and business email address.

 

Your privacy. The data you provide in the process of using the Envisage tools is considered private. Your contact information will not be shared by us. Your account is password protected. A link to our privacy policy can be found at the bottom of this page.

 

Subscription. These tools are subscribed to on a pay-per-use basis. With each use you’ll create a single scenario that is called a “case.” To conduct what-if analyses you will need to purchase additional cases. For each case, you can save the data and revise it until you select the Save and Show Results button. At that moment, the case information is stored and only the final information will be accessible.

 

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