The In & Out Market Map

People can't buy what they don't remember. The Unforgettable Brand helps you build a brand by shaping memories that drive decision-making.

The marketing funnel is very broken

It's over 126 years old and it's not at all reflective of the consumer experience.

We know people don't travel in a linear path from awareness to consideration and so on, but we excuse its use as a way to organize different types of marketing content and to buy media. This often leads to confusion and silos among the marketers responsible for brand or product or performance or growth or activation or campaigns. Who is responsible for what? You're also likely creating too much content overall and a lot of duplicative stuff.

I’m proposing something new: The Market State Map (MSM)

Every business has only two types of customers: Those that are in-market and those that are out-of-market. At any given moment — whether you sell a soft drink, cars, or gym memberships — the vast majority of people are not in the market for what you sell. In fact, we know from research done by The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute that 95% of people are out-of-market at any given time.

People Only Exist In Two States

But then something happens. Or some things happen. You get thirsty. Your family is about to grow. Your waistline has grown. A need moves you from being out-of-market to being in-market. Let's call those triggers for now because they trigger you to start shopping in your brain. You would love a cold, refreshing soda and immediately think about your favorite kinds. You start thinking about safety and the need for extra seating. You wonder if you could handle the intensity of something like SoulCycle or if you’re better off just buying a Peloton.

As quickly as you moved in-market you could move back out. Your triggers might be different than these examples. Maybe you're new car shopping because your kid is turning 16 or because you're sick of paying for gas and are looking into hybrids or electric cars.

It's not linear and it's not circular. It feels like a spray chart of possible interactions and "touch points" with the brand that are impossible to map or keep track of.

So we default to the funnel. It's neat. It's tidy. And it's wrong.

Triggers are buying situations for your brand

Every move from out-of-market to in-market starts with a trigger: The moment a person decides they need or want a product or service in their life. It can be as basic and primal as hunger or as impulsive and extraneous as wanting a new couch because they don't like the current couch color anymore.

Triggers Move People from OUT to IN

That's where this new model focuses: On Category Entry Points (CEPs). CEPs are the cues that category buyers use to access their memories when faced with a buying situation and can include any internal cues (e.g., motives, emotions) and external cues (e.g., location, time of day) that affect any buying situation.

Every customer is different but there will be a lot of common, profitable, credible CEPs for your brand. Professor Jenni Romaniuk wrote the book on CEPs, so if you want to learn more about how to identify the ones in your category and which ones you should pursue, read this.

To explain the rest of the my framework, I'm going to use a brand I used to work on — Hidden Valley Ranch — as the example in the pilot.

HVR has several moments where they want to be considered for their flavor profile and portfolio of products. This list isn't exhaustive but is inclusive of key areas they care about. It's also worth noting that several brands could fill these needs. That's okay. The marketing activities this framework outlines will keep our brand near the top of the consideration set and well activated in buying moments.

• "I need salad dressing."
• "I need a condiment."
• "I need extra flavor."
• "I need snacks at my party."
• "I need to make a quick, flavorful dinner."

These CEPs for Hidden Valley Ranch span their product portfolio (traditional ranch, dip cups, dry seasoning) and a number of their business/product objectives like being seen as more than just a salad dressing and thought about as an easy way to make delicious dinners for you family.

Notice these are written from the POV of the consumer and what they need. They're also specific but not overly prescriptive. HVR doesn't just want to be known as a cooking ingredient, but as a cooking ingredient that's quick without compromising flavor. It's a specific need a parent might feel after a long day and with picky eaters at home.

Once you have a reasonable list of CEPs, think about each one in context of the two consumer states. How should you communicate a CPE when someone is out-of-market to ensure they remember you when a trigger occurs? And how should you communicate a CPE when someone is in-market to ensure they convert?

How "out" and "in" map to System 1 & 2 thinking

It's not a coincidence that these in and out-of-market states correspond perfectly to the two modes of human attention.

Dubbed System 1 and System 2 in his popular book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, cognitive scientist Daniel Kahneman outlines a very simple idea that won him The Nobel Prize for Economics.

95% of human attention is passive. It relies on mental shortcuts, is heavily irrational and emotional, and subconsciously builds memories. This is System 1.

The other 5% of the time we're actively focused. Rational and actively weighing options and needs. We act on existing memory structures. This is System 2.

This means when people are out-of-market, if you want to play to the attention state of the human brain, your marketing should focus on building memories.

And when people are in-market, your marketing should focus on driving action.

How do you build memories?

My entire newsletter is about building memories for your brand.

But in short order: Seek attention and fame using emotion and stories.

Les Binet and Peter Field have outlined this in The Long and The Short of It.

With out-of-market prospects is where your brand can shine. You should be measuring big, long-term objectives here like reach, share-of-voice, brand awareness and mental availability or salience.

Let's bring back our Hidden Valley Ranch example.

Remember, these people are NOT in the market for ranch. It doesn't mean they don't like ranch, it means they don't need it right now and aren't thinking about it.

We don't just want to build awareness for HVR. We want to build mental availability – coming to mind easily and in specific situations. Think of it almost like situational awareness for a particular set of CEPs. And remember that the CEPs are basically the buying situations or triggers for our potential customers.

Building Mental Availability with CEPs

"I need a condiment." 👇

"I need to make a quick/flavorful dinner." 👇

"I need snacks at my party." 👇

"I need extra flavor." 👇

These are SUPER basic examples (and they're all TV/OLV for simplicity) but the principles of stories, humor, and tying it all to specific CEPs are exactly what HVR needs to build mental availability with people who are currently out-of-market.

Other tactics can easily include a vast array of channels and even include brand stunts or partnerships.

HVR took an approach that made the brand top-of-mind in culture and associated it with flavor, creativity, and joy by grabbing headlines and moments of fame.

Now how do you drive action?

We've satisfied the System 1 part of peoples' brains and created tons of messaging that will build mental availability for people out of market for HVR.

Cue a trigger moment.

We've got someone planning their family's weekly dinner menu. Someone else is group texting their friends about a cookout this weekend. And a third person is in the grocery store buying frozen pizza. They are potentially in-market for HVR.

How do we message against our CEPs to in-market folks to ensure they convert?

Driving Conversion Against CEPs

This phase of marketing is all about fluency, availability, simplicity, and proof.

• Fluency: Distinctive brand assets, approachable display or packaging.
• Availability: Easy to find, placement, distribution, price.
• Simplicity: Direct, useful, and easy to understand.
• Proof: Claims, reviews, endorsements, collaborations.

This is where your product or service should shine. Specifically address how it functions, what the process is like, how it pays off what a person needs and the benefit of that. You should be measuring short-term, action-oriented objectives here like clicks, CTR, web/store traffic, sales, and sales at full price.

"I need to make a quick/flavorful dinner." 👇 Messaging tactics could include:

• Partner with food and recipe influencers
• Have owned recipes on your site that are SEO optimized for the types of dinners you want to be know for: "easy," "family," "quick," and "chicken"
• Run SEM for key terms
• Have programmatic display ads and retargeted social ads that show use, inspire people with ideas, and feature real people as partners for social proof

I'm not going to flesh out a messaging plan for each hypothetical in-market customer, but hopefully you're getting the point.

But I will say, that especially for the in-market group, your price, placement and other elements of marketing are very important.

For the guy in the store buying frozen pizza, how do you set yourself up for success?

A special ranch display on the freezer door. A bottle designed for squirting and dipping. A bottle that looks like a condiment bottle, not a salad dressing bottle. Maybe a label with a pizza on it instead of a salad bowl.

✍ Long Story Short ✍

• Customers exist in two states: out-of-market and in-market
• Triggers or Category Entry Points are need states or buying situations that move people from out-of-market to in-market
• The two market states correspond perfectly with the two states of human attention: System 1 and System 2
• Out-of-Market and System 1 require attention, fame, emotion, and stories to build mental availability for your brand
• In-Market and System 2 require fluency, availability, simplicity, and proof to drive conversions and sales for your brand

The out-of-market and in-market states will accommodate anything you previously had in a traditional marketing funnel. Awareness, consideration, interest, desire, or conversion activities can all fit into this framework, but now they're linked by CEPs. Your marketing will improve because it's aligned with the experiences of people and how our brains work. You will probably make a whole lot less marketing material and actually improve your marketing efficiency because instead of trying to fill 4-6 steps of a funnel you now have an efficient 2-state framework.

You can download a template of this framework here. Use it to fill in your brand's top triggers or CEPs and start mapping your out-of-market and in-market messaging in a way that drives and delivers against each one.

You can also download the 15-page PDF guide I just created to walk you through The In & Out Market Map in greater detail. Its 100% free.

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