A wholesale distributor consolidating multiple facility maintenance and operations brands wanted to track brand equity

The Challenge

Brand consolidation across multiple industry verticals

The wholesale distributor was consolidating several of the brands in its portfolio under its umbrella brand name. It wanted to measure ROI and guide brand strategy by capturing a robust brand health benchmark among facility maintenance and operations decision-makers across six industry verticals.

To track brand equity across this many industry verticals required reaching a broad range of audiences, from on-site maintenance teams ordering cleaning supplies to senior executives at corporate HQ negotiating large scale contracts. The distributor needed a B2B market research agency with a strong understanding of facility maintenance and operations to conduct brand tracking research.

Our Approach

Comprehensive study to measure brand equity over time

Werk Insight, a B2B market research company, designed a comprehensive brand equity tracker to assess brand awareness, consideration, usage and advocacy among facility maintenance and operations decision-makers in multiple waves over time.

We started the research with an in-person workshop with internal stakeholders to discuss the target buyer profile across different target verticals, competitors and brand drivers across the portfolio and umbrella brands. This formed the basis for a questionnaire to gather brand health metrics across all six industry verticals. From 825 interviews with facility maintenance and operations decision-makers, we gathered metrics on:

Brand equity – brand awareness, consideration, usage and advocacy in a competitive context
Brand perceptions and performance – what focus brands are known for and how that resonates (or doesn’t) with buyers.
Brand needs and alignment – what the market values in a brand and how well the brands perform on these factors
Brand activation – what marketing channels to use

We analyzed the data using a few research techniques:

Brand funnel analysis identified where the brand is strongest and weakest relative to the competition, and where there are gaps in pulling buyers through the funnel.
Drivers analysis determined how to prioritize marketing messages that resonate with facility maintenance and operations decision-makers, as well as how to increase the share of wallet.
TURF analysis identified which media channels and sources to prioritize to raise awareness across the verticals

We repeated the brand tracker across multiple waves to measure the impact of key brand marketing initiatives on brand awareness, consideration and usage.

The Insight

Clear direction for brand marketing strategy

The research quantified overall brand performance and identified which audiences the brand is strongest with. It provided clear direction on what media channels to prioritize and where to focus marketing resources to strengthen brand health.

By tracking these metrics over multiple waves, the wholesale distributor could see the impact of its brand marketing initiatives on increasing brand awareness, consideration and usage. This informed the distributor’s 3-year brand marketing strategy, both for its umbrella brand and specific to each vertical.

Wholesale Distributor Consolidates Facility MRO Brands