How we do it

How we do what we do, so you can do more of what you do.

Media and culture move fast. Brands can’t just chase trends—they need to understand why ideas spread and speak directly to the specific people who love what they offer. The Specific Methodology uses lessons from pop culture to shape brand, story, and strategy so messages resonate with the right audience. Because when you know exactly who you’re talking to, you can create work that connects, converts, and continues to grow.

  • Every great story has an audience.

    Who is yours? Most companies start with an overly wide funnel, trying to build for a broad, general audience. A company becomes a brand when it makes a promise. A promise is intimate. The companies that believe they can shout a tagline to millions and call it a promise don’t win true specific customers. If you can’t define what makes your audience distinctive, how do you expect they describe your brand? The customers you know and are able to communicate with–with specificity–are your best customers. The future of your brand. 

  • Loyalty has limits.

    Knowing who you are reaching, and who is converting helps in two major ways. First, better understanding of the best customer means refining elements of your promise to build loyalty, accelerating the purchase cycle and increasing customer lifetime value. You will continue to make and keep promises that matter. Second, knowing what jobs today’s best customer chooses you for helps create variations of your offering for other prospects. Create a model for adding other specific audiences who share similar, but divergent, interests and use cases. 

At Specific, we have three core beliefs.

  • Or maybe better. When we understand your best customers and what motivates them, we can identify new problems you can solve for them. In the same way we’re able to finish our partner’s sentences, the brand should complete thoughts for the customer

  • We use past patterns and trends to plan for everything from traffic to weather.

    Why not apply the same thinking to growth and user experience? Understand exactly what our best customers choose and how they interact with us, and gain insight into improving their experience and recruiting more like them.

  • Only when you understand the nuanced spaces between these people and your offerings can you compel them to choose your brand. By understanding the lay of the land, we can chart the best course to your best customers.

    Positioning your brand, and your offerings in the marketplace are made up of three factors. Who is your target customer; what do they seek to replace in their lives; what is the benefit they find most meaningful? The information to reveal all of this and plan for it has never been more available. The Specific Methodology takes into account the modern media environment to deliver behavior and preferences that separate your best customers from the “prospects” that will never choose you.

First, we examine any internal data you collect. Sales data, web analytics, platform information, retailer insights, primary research.

You already have the data, we just help you get its full value.

We analyze all of the information to find patterns about discovery and salience of your offering that may not have been visible in real time. From fresh eyes, come new insights. Our team researches partners, competitors and indirect threats and opportunities. In some cases, the assumed customer is confirmed. Often a new segment is revealed either as a better customer or with potential worth investigating.

IDENTIFY TRENDS AND OPPORTUNITIES

COMB THE CONTEXT

Three beliefs become our three steps.

TRACK THE NUMBERS

  • First, we examine any internal data you collect. Sales data, web analytics, platform information, retailer insights, primary research.

    You already have the data, we just help you get its full value.

    We analyze all of the information to find patterns about discovery and salience of your offering that may not have been visible in real time. From fresh eyes, come new insights. Our team researches partners, competitors and indirect threats and opportunities. In some cases, the assumed customer is confirmed. Often a new segment is revealed either as a better customer or with potential worth investigating.

  • Next we explore everything there is to know about the customer segment that makes up your best group.

    We match them against a collection of data bases, tools and potentially conduct new research with your team to learn about the context of their lives.

    By learning the choices they make in media, hobbies and other, adjacent and non-adjacent categories, we learn how they think. What about them besides their most recent purchase tells us how they choose, and why they chose your product?

  • Finally, we search the spaces between your best customer and your category to make the vague specific. We use a combination of cutting edge tools and secret shopper approaches to understand how someone moves from passive consumer to prospect.

    How is the category reaching them? How do they learn about the category antes and differences? What resources do they use to investigate and make a selection?

    The environmental trend scan follows the prospect from awareness to interest and desire through action across media, physical spaces, decision influencers and the web.

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Next we explore everything there is to know about the customer segment that makes up your best group.

We match them against a collection of data bases, tools and potentially conduct new research with your team to learn about the context of their lives.

By learning the choices they make in media, hobbies and other, adjacent and non-adjacent categories, we learn how they think. What about them besides their most recent purchase tells us how they choose, and why they chose your product?

Finally, we search the spaces between your best customer and your category to make the vague specific. We use a combination of cutting edge tools and secret shopper approaches to understand how someone moves from passive consumer to prospect.

How is the category reaching them? How do they learn about the category antes and differences? What resources do they use to investigate and make a selection?

The environmental trend scan follows the prospect from awareness to interest and desire through action across media, physical spaces, decision influencers and the web.

Have we piqued your interest?

We would love to hear from you. Let’s talk.