In the complex landscape of women’s healthcare, conventional wisdom has long suggested that multiple factors influence women’s experiences with contraception brands, specifically mechanism of action (MOA), distribution channels (direct-to-consumer versus physician-dispensed), and/or brand legacy. However, a new consumer mapping tool for marketers has unveiled insights that challenge these fundamental assumptions, revealing a surprising truth about the contraception market.
Fundamentally, and contrary to industry expectations, women perceive the contraception category as remarkably homogeneous. This finding stands in stark contrast to most consumer health and wellness industries, where brand differentiation is standard and demonstrates distinct market leaders.
Yet even within the uniformed category of women’s contraception, a single, crucial differentiator in how women experience and navigate contraception brands emerged: the hormone. This revelation proved transformative for a team of women’s health marketers who had been allocating marketing resources, i.e. time, budget, and personnel, to counter a perceived threat of a distribution channel disrupter.
The insight that the hormone is the true brand differentiator transformed how the marketing team regarded their target audiences, now clearly segmented by core values: hormone-conscious consumers versus those prioritizing efficacy, with striking contrasts in the brand journey between these two segments.
Investigating how each consumer segment experienced the brand, marketers found that hormone-conscious women demonstrated higher brand awareness but experienced fragmented engagement due to marketing messages and images that primarily targeted efficacy-focused consumers. Conversely, while efficacy-focused women maintained stronger brand loyalty throughout their journey, their initial awareness levels significantly lagged behind their hormone-conscious counterparts.
These instructive insights and the imperative marketing shifts that happened because of them were only possible because of a new consumer mapping tool called the BrandWave™, developed by EvolveMKD. The BrandWave™ is a groundbreaking methodology for mapping and analyzing consumer engagement patterns, revolutionizing the traditional marketing funnel, which, despite serving as the industry standard for over 125 years, displays a linear approach that falls short of providing strategic marketing answers to today’s complex, multi-channel marketplace.
For marketers, understanding this consumer brand journey remains fundamental to driving meaningful engagement and measurable results, and the contraception case study exemplifies how BrandWave™ uncovers the critical insights that traditional funnel analysis consistently misses.
Specifically, the BrandWave™ revealed five crucial insights for the contraception brand to action on:
- Identified existing brand strengths and competitive advantages
- Pinpointed specific journey optimization opportunities
- Unveiled distinct audience experiences requiring targeted strategies
- Delivered actionable competitive intelligence
- Exposed category complacency, highlighting differentiation opportunities
To learn more about the BrandWave™ and discover your brand’s BrandWave, visit EvolveMKD’s website HERE.