Visuals for Marketers
- Describe Interrelationships of Groups: Venn Diagram
- Describe Competitive Landscape: Positioning Matrix
- Show Marketing Regions: Sales Territory Map
1. Describe the Interrelationships Between Groups with a Venn Diagram
Venn diagrams allow you and your audience to see the connections,
relations, and proportions of the market segments and sub-segments
you are targeting, and—more importantly—are not targeting.
You can indicate for each segment appropriate characteristics
or attributes of that segment that define its behavior.
Without the aid of a Venn diagram, trying to explain the interrelationships
of different groups can be very confusing. A Venn diagram, however,
clearly defines your target market by showing where groups overlap.
How to Create a Venn Diagram
Creating a Venn diagram with SmartDraw could not be easier.
Simply choose one of the Venn Diagram templates from the "Marketing Charts"
category of SmartTemplates, and type your information into the chart.
But beyond the simple mechanics of creating the chart,
let's explore the thinking behind it by looking at a specific example.
Let's say, for the purpose of our example, you are selling an expensive high-tech golf ball with built-in GPS golf bag-based locator. Certainly your target is a segment of the golfer population. But this is a very expensive product, so only the most affluent can afford it.
How can we visualize the target of high-net worth golfers?
Draw a circle representing the golfer population. Next, draw one for the high-net worth individual population. (With your SmartDraw template, these circles will already be drawn.)
Now overlap them to the degree that you know (or suspect) the populations overlap. That's it for this simple visualization.
Of course, for a powerful visual, we can dress it up for better impact. Then annotate it with headlines and data as shown here.
You can make more complicated Venn diagrams for other relationships too. The following is an example:
To watch a video on how to create Venn diagrams with SmartDraw,
click here.
2. Describe the Competitive Landscape with a Positioning Matrix
Positioning refers to how you want your customers to perceive your product within the context of the overall market, their other product options, and themselves. Your ultimate goal is to identify positions in the market that represent unmet need. If your product fills those needs better than any other product, you will be naturally differentiated from the competition.
Positioning maps help you visualize your products in the marketplace relative to competitive products, customer needs, and even the other products in your product line. You can use positioning maps to define an overall product strategy before creating a product or to craft the unique value proposition and messaging for existing products.
Since a positioning matrix plots products relative to two dimensions, it allows you to visually see how different products are
perceived—something that is very difficult, if not impossible, to do with a text-only description.
How to Create a Product Positioning Matrix Diagram
As with Venn diagrams, creating a positioning matrix with SmartDraw is simply a matter of starting with a positioning matrix template and filling in your information.
First you must choose the factors to plot on each axis. The process of thinking about potential factors is useful in and of itself and helps you better understand all the dimensions at play in the market. These factors represent tradeoffs relevant to the purchase of the products in the market. The far ends of each axis represent opposite extremes along a factor.
If you already have a product and are trying to understand your unique position, you can choose the axes so that your product exists on its own in one of them. Let's use SmartDraw as an example.
We want to see SmartDraw's unique position in the graphics software space.
We start with the idea that graphics software applications are used to create business graphics and artistic graphics. Additionally, applications are designed for frequent, expert users like graphic artists or for non-expert users.
We express this with the two axes as follows.
Next we add the existing competitors to their quadrants.
We can now clearly see SmartDraw's unique position as an easy to use business graphics software
application. This helps us define our messaging, guide our product development,
and target our marketing.
To watch a video on how to make a product positioning matrix
with SmartDraw,
click here.
3. Show Marketing Regions with a Sales Territory Map
When you want to show geographic regions like sales territories or market regions, there is no better tool than territory map with colors, labels and highlights. This allows you to pack more information into a slide than a text list or text table of information. It also gives everyone in the organization a quick reference as to what sales and marketing efforts are going on where.
How to Create and Present a Territory Map
To watch a video on how to make maps with SmartDraw,
click here.
In the video you'll see how to use SmartDraw to create an engaging sales territory map that displays this sales data:
Our message is to show relative performance and to highlight that the West region was the best performer relative to quota.
Start by outlining each territory or region of the map. In this case, we'll need all the state outlines.
Next, choose colors to define each region. We'll use colors that also reflect performance, such as the following set.
When we color the states, we have a new diagram.
Now, to complete the diagram, let's add the legend and a title.
