3 valuable tips for selecting your most impactful CEPs

As a brand, you want as many consumers as possible to think of your brand. You want to be mentally present in the minds of consumers. After all, the more memory structures you activate in people's daily lives and manage to link your brand to them, the more often consumers will think of you, and the more sales you will ultimately make as a brand.  

One way to boost your mental availibility is to deploy Category Entry Points. And once you have gathered a list of potential CEPs within your category, you need to start selecting the most impactful ones.

Category Entry Points represent times and situations when people first think of the category. When you make your bed in the morning you might think of mattresses, or even a specific brand. If you sell beds as a brand, you can capitalize on that and claim the morning. The reverse is also possible, claim moments where the category or your brand is not necessarily thought of, like Coca Cola claimed Christmas and even designed a Santa Claus for it.

Test your potential Category Entry Points on these three dimensions

From our numerous studies, we can say with certainty that three dimensions have proven effective for testing:

• (1) Relevance
• (2) Massiveness
• (3) Competitive position

1. Test your CEPs for relevance.

Consider how frequently a CEP, that is, a specific moment, occurs in consumers' daily lives. The more often such a situation occurs in a day, the more often the consumer will be triggered. And if you claim that specific moment as a CEP, then your brand will come up in people's minds more often than a moment that occurs less frequently in a day. Do you choose the most frequent CEP? Then you boost your mental availability.

2. Go for CEPs that appeal to the masses

Which CEPs will be most recognizable to the overall Dutch (or international) population? By claiming such Category Entry Points, you want as many people as possible to think of your brand in order to get as many people as possible at the beginning of your marketing funnel. Then you need to appeal to as large a target group as possible with those moments. For example, think of "My kids have to play sports tonight," then you've already lost half of the Dutch population because they don't have kids. But if you talk about 'It's almost weekend,' then this moment applies to everyone.

3. Select the most distinctive CEPs from your competition

‍Asa brand, you will always have to deal with other brands within your category: your competitors. Ideally, you want the memory structures to be activated immediately when consumers experience your claimed CEPs in everyday life. But this only happens if your CEPs manage to stand out well within the category. So ask yourself while selecting, which CEPs are interesting to attract to you. And how easily they can be linked to your brand without consumers thinking of another brand.

These three dimensions can help you select the most impactful CEPs. But of course, when considering these dimensions, keep in mind what direction you want to go as a brand.

Discover what Category Entry Points can do for your brand

Are you curious about how to strategically deploy your selected CEPs? Or do you want to discover what Category Entry Points can do for your brand? Download our latest white paper in which branding experts Wilco Wigboldus and Ed Borsboom tell you all the do's and dont's based on our years of research knowledge and experience.

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Download the white paper Boost your brand with Category Entry Points