Marketing constellations for offer, target audience and positioning
You want to bring a new offer to market, but keep falling back on the existing story. Within the team, the picture of the ideal customer differs. Or everyone can explain the proposition, yet nobody makes the same choice when time or budget is limited.
A marketing constellation is an application of constellations to a commercial question. You might, for example, give organisation, offer, target audience and alternatives a place in the room. This lets you explore perspectives and assumptions that you can then investigate further.
At upMention we connect this to customer information, market data and concrete choices in positioning and execution.
What is a marketing constellation?
In a marketing constellation you explore how you look at a commercial situation and which relationships within it might be relevant. You can work with people, objects or markers. A place can represent a target audience, an offer, a brand promise or an important choice.
Suppose you want to offer a new product alongside an existing service. You can give both a place, together with the organisation and the customers you have in mind. The constellation may prompt questions such as: which offer gets our attention, where do we disagree, and what information are we missing?
The constellation does not make actual customer thinking visible. A representative of a target audience is not a sample of that target audience. We therefore use this method to explore questions and formulate assumptions, not to determine what the market will certainly do.
Which commercial questions can you explore?
Which target audience do we choose?
"We are here for anyone who wants quality" does little to help distribute attention. You can explore which target audiences the organisation has in mind, what each choice means, and which interests come into play when you give a target audience less priority.
Customer research remains necessary afterwards. Who actually has the need? In what situation does it arise? What alternatives do people use? The article on positioning and target audience works out that next step.
What place does a new offer get?
A new service sometimes gets a page on the website, while sales, planning and incentives remain focused on the old offer. There is then a communication question, but also an organisational one. A marketing constellation can be used to explore the intended relationship between the new and existing offer.
Does our promise match what we deliver?
An organisation can promise personal attention while having a way of working that leaves little room for customisation. The conversation then is not only about better wording. You explore what the customer is promised and what that requires in execution.
Why do we keep revisiting the same choice?
Choosing a target audience can mean setting aside another growth route for now. Explore which consideration is still unclear. Is it about commercial uncertainty, available knowledge, existing customers, or disagreement about direction?
An example: a new offer without a place of its own
This example is meant as a thinking aid and is not an existing client case.
A service provider wants to introduce an ongoing subscription alongside one-off assignments. The website has been updated, but salespeople keep mainly offering one-off assignments. Management concludes that the new message is not yet convincing enough.
In a marketing constellation you can examine the one-off assignment, the subscription, the customer, the sales team and the organisation. A question that might emerge: does the subscription actually get the same room within the organisation as it does in the plans?
You then check what is actually happening. What is sales assessed on? How is a subscription explained? Is it clear which customer it suits? Can the organisation deliver the promised continuity?
A possible outcome is that the wording is not the first problem. Another possibility is that customers do not sufficiently recognise the need. You need to investigate both. The follow-up step could be a change in sales agreements, a customer interview, or a test of the proposition.
How we combine the constellation with customer research
Beforehand: what do we already know?
We start with existing information. Think of won and lost quotes, customer questions, interviews, website behaviour and sales results. We note what is known and which conclusions rest mainly on expectations.
During the constellation: which questions arise?
We explore the question from different positions. The goal is not for everyone to experience the same thing. A difference can, in fact, reveal that terms such as "good customer", "quality" or "growth" mean something different to different people involved.
Afterwards: what are we going to test?
We formulate a question you can investigate with real information. For example: do potential customers understand when this subscription is relevant to them? Or: do salespeople know when to propose the new offer?
We choose a fitting test. Sometimes that is a conversation with customers. Sometimes an analysis of sales conversations or a targeted campaign. The scale of a decision should match the quality of the information you have.
How does this differ from an organisational constellation?
In an organisational constellation, the starting point is more often roles, collaboration and responsibilities. In a marketing constellation, the starting point is offer, target audience and market approach.
That is not a hard divide. If marketing and sales use different definitions of a promising customer, both sides come into play. Read how to examine the collaboration between marketing and sales in concrete terms.
What can be on the table afterwards?
The goal is that you can state more clearly what the commercial question is and what step is needed next. That could be a sharper target-audience choice, a different wording of the promise, a decision about the offer, or a test with a clear learning goal.
We keep a distinction between an attractive idea and a well-founded choice. A constellation does not produce a revenue forecast, market share, or a reliable prediction of buying behaviour. You need other research for that.
When is a marketing constellation not needed?
Not every commercial question calls for a different method. If visitors cannot submit a contact form, that needs to be fixed. If nobody knows why quotes are being rejected, start with that information. And if the target audience has not been spoken to, a customer conversation may add more than a session involving only your own team.
A marketing constellation comes into view when it can help move a concrete question forward and those involved deliberately choose that way of exploring.
Discuss your commercial question first
You do not need to know yet whether you need a marketing constellation. Tell us what you want to decide, what signals you are seeing and what remains unclear. Together we determine how to explore that and translate it into your proposition, marketing and execution.