—How we do it

Our signature
Marketwave
Approach

At Marketwave, everything we do revolves around identifying and elevating your brand purpose. Or as many like to say, finding your why. This is what grounds our work and helps us arrive at the intersection of purpose and profit. Our strategic, comprehensive approach is what energizes us, differentiates us and defines our path forward. Here’s how we uncover, clarify and amplify what matters most to your key stakeholders.

a woman standing in front of a whiteboard with notes on it

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Listen

Whether it already exists or you need support, baseline quantitative and/or qualitative research is the foundation for Marketwave’s approach. From social listening, surveys, focus groups and interviews, we have the tools and the resources to gauge your brand and the competition ahead of any project.

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Discover

Key to Marketwave’s success has always been our client discovery sessions. This is how we build brands, establish messaging and develop campaigns from the inside. With these insights, we apply the paid, earned, shared and owned (PESO) model to a strategic marketing effort built on these learnings.

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Create

With our exploratory work complete, we move into the create stage. Working closely with our clients, Marketwave will ideate, concept and present the copy, tools and the visuals that will tell your story and meet your goals. Here we build the plans and assets to fit your channels and business objectives.

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Activate

Once our materials are final, Marketwave puts the plan in motion. This could be unveiling a new website or charging ahead on a coordinated product roll-out. It could include lining up vendors and support for production and execution or an orchestrated PESO launch. Executing against a detailed plan is our specialty.

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Measure

From the start, Marketwave sets KPIs and SMART goals to monitor and measure impressions, clicks, views, engagements and conversions. We analyze site traffic and media reports all in an effort to understand what’s working, what’s not and how we can optimize our work for maximum impact.

Brandwave^TMBRANDWAVE^TM

— Signature Brand Workshop

Brandwave™

Our team knows how to work a room. Especially when it comes to our Brandwave rooms that are filled with dynamic collaboration, smart insights and thoughtful discussion with your leadership team or a cross-functional group. These brand workshops cover what makes you different, what your stakeholders care about, and your unique brand personality. What do you end up with? A solid brand platform as a guide for all marketing and communications activities. While we’ve mastered hosting these online (thanks a lot 2020!), our favorite way to connect to what really matters about your brand is in person, without interruption, for a full-day workshop.

Setting the Stage

Your brand is more than a logo and more than an identity. It’s really what people say when you’re not around and that’s exactly what our Brandwave sessions influence in your favor. Our team starts this process by diving deep into your competitive landscape and market dynamics through research and stakeholder interviews.

The Day Of

We kick off the day sharing our brand methodology and the initial insights. From there, it’s very interactive. And what feels like a lot of talking, reflecting, collaborating, debating word choices and themes, shapes your brand platform with 5 distinct parts. This is what makes your marketing easier, effective and high impact. And the best kept secret about investing the time and concentration? Brandwaves are fun – for us and our clients!

The Brand Platform

Following the Brandwave workshop, our team of seasoned professionals and expert facilitators take the insights gleaned and build what becomes the ultimate brand guide, built exclusively for you. It includes:

Brand Purpose

That aspirational goal that drives you

Core Competencies

Your unique competitive strengths

Brand Positioning

What your customers should think about you

Brand Personality

How you interact and project yourself

Brand Essence

Your fundamental nature or quality

Why it Matters?

From the way we write about you to the channels we leverage to connect to your key audiences, your brand is the true North Star. Not only does this create the consistency required to build a strong brand, it ensures that it shines bright at the intersection of purpose and profit.

A group of people sitting around a table with laptops

—Employee Experience Workshop

Exwave™

Our team knows how to build a brand. From the inside. Marketwave’s EXwave workshops identify what your employer brand stands for with a comprehensive evaluation around the Employee Experience (EX). We look at what it is today and what it could be to build an employer brand that attracts and retains the top talent you need, engaged and invested. Why it matters? Because engaged employees perform better, stay longer and make your team stronger. Countless studies prove it.

Evaluating the Employee Experience

Marketwave works with clients to enhance all areas of the Employee Experience through an employer brand lens– from recruitment and onboarding to DE&I initiatives, culture accelerators and retention strategies – taking into account the entire employee journey. We start by looking through the eyes of a potential candidate, then understand the first-day experience, and look at the onboarding path. We also evaluate the experience of newer employees versus more tenured team members including conducting stay interviews to understand the reasons for retention. Ahead of our EXwave workshop, Marketwave will conduct stay interviews with a cross section of employees as our baseline, we’ll review the competitive landscape, perform an online sentiment analysis and assess key employer review sites. We’ll also take a look at your employee satisfaction surveys and feedback to ground our session and inform our recommendations.

Defining your EVP

Our team of seasoned professionals and expert facilitators use these insights and a workshop setting to build your employee value proposition (EVP) in alignment with your talent goals. An EVP is the unique set of benefits that an employee receives in return for the skills, capabilities and experience they bring to a company. An EVP is about defining the essence of your organization – how it is unique and what it stands for.

We use the EVP framework put forward by Gartner that covers the following areas:

Rewards: salary, stock options, benefits, soft perks, time off

Work: job-interest-goals alignment and work-life balance

Organization: company purpose/vision/mission/values, reputation and social responsibility

Opportunity: career growth, education, personal/professional development

People: colleagues, leadership, company culture, DEI

Bringing your EVP to Life

Once your EVP is defined, Marketwave works with our clients on the last three critical steps:

Distill

Develop an essence statement that guides tone, messaging and decision making

Integrate

Infuse all employee HR touchpoints with the EVP including recruitment materials, onboarding process and the employee development journey

Communicate

Ensure that your new EVP is integral to your employer brand story and comes through in all major brand touchpoints and channels, both internally and externally

a woman standing in front of a whiteboard with sticky notes on it

—It’s not what you say. It’s how you say it.

Message Mapping

And most importantly, does it resonate with your key stakeholders? Marketwave’s signature Message Map sessions hone in on the right words, help your team be in sync, and build consensus around your purpose and positioning. This is the foundational work that bolsters and amplifies any marketing program and brand-building pursuit. And the resulting Message Map unifies your brand messages so the core pillars are consistent across your entire effort and each campaign.

This messaging work includes:

The Pitch

It’s time to redefine your elevator pitch and get everyone saying the same thing. It’s how you differentiate, stand out, and position yourself for success. After a session with us, we’ll help you articulate not only what you do, but why to believe in it – clearly, succinctly, and with maximum impact for your key audiences.

The People

Working with your team, we’ll discuss your key audiences and uncover what they need to feel, think, and do in order to choose your services – often in moments when decisions must be made quickly and confidently. While the workshop is collaborative, we take the insights further: finding themes, capturing the highlights, and defining the specific messaging that guides your key audiences smoothly through their journey.

The Proof

For this part we really drill deep with your team. What are the key messages that support this new pitch and can you prove it? These are your best numbers, your industry accolades, key success points, impactful results, and the list goes on. We’ll inspire healthy internal debate to land on those that build the best story.

The Product

With a small investment of time, you end up with a big return on investment. One that guides marketing planning, key audience acquisition, strategy, and the evolution of your brand all while keeping you on message.

Our signature Marketwave Approach