Category Entry Points Dissected: How They Really Contribute to Growth
More CEPs don’t automatically mean more growth. Learn how to choose the right ones and avoid common mistakes.
A much-cited, influential book in the marketing world is How Brands Grow by Byron Sharp and the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute. Category Entry Points (CEPs) take a prominent place in the explanation of how good marketing can work. Since the research of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute has become more popular, CEPs have also increasingly appeared in our professional discussions and marketing strategies. A good development for the enthusiast of evidence-driven marketing, but as we often see, the noise also increases as more people run away with new concepts.
The result: we see many different definitions of CEP, even more interpretations, CEPs that are not CEPs, and CEPs that are compared to, for example, USPs or category drivers that simply do not make sense. As a result, CEP is in danger of becoming a meaningless buzzword , while it is a valuable strategic tool to help brands grow.
The VIA Consumer Insights Taskforce therefore felt it was high time to provide some clarity. We look at what CEPs are exactly, how you can achieve strategic growth with them and the four most common mistakes marketers make when working with CEPs. To do this, we worked with Professor Jenni Romaniuk – co-author of ‘How Brands Grow’ and Associate Director at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute. In this first article of a two-part series, we focus on the two biggest pitfalls surrounding CEPs.
What are Category Entry Points (CEPs)?
CEPs are essentially moments when someone mentally enters a product or service category. Think of a long day at the sunny beach when you feel like having a refreshing drink, or a birthday party where your neighbor tells you how much money he has saved by buying solar panels and you suddenly think about buying them. These moments act as cues that trigger your memory to recall brands.
Research from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute shows that linking a brand to as many of these relevant cues as possible increases mental availability. This increases the chance that your brand will be top-of-mind when someone is considering a purchase. In other words, the more often a brand pops up in the consumer’s mind at relevant CEPs, the greater the chance of a (future) purchase.
Pitfalls in applying CEPs
Although CEPs seem clear in theory, in practice they often go wrong. We asked Romaniuk about the most common pitfalls and how to avoid them. Below we discuss the first two.
Read the full article in Adformatie.
