In prior posts and in conversation, I have made multiple references to FORMO’s precision-guided approach to marketing. My personal experience from over 20 years of luxury marketing combined with the knowledge gained from the implementation of highly effective marketing plans in recent years resulted in the evolution of the precision-guided marketing model. The basis for this model is the field of luxury marketing. Within luxury marketing, brand marketers are faced with a highly discriminating and generally elusive market. In our experience the response to traditional marketing is very low making an adequate return on investment difficult to produce without a large and sustained finanical effort. Which quite honestly is beyond the budgeted resources for most of the brands that I’ve analyzed. Consequently it was necessary to reinvent the strategy, to try a different approach.

That approach is the the FORMO model. Its theory is based not on the attributes of the brand but on the characteristics of each person in a brand’s target market.

If you understand each individual in your target market then you can employ a much more efficient marketing strategy that focuses your brand on the touch points where it crosses the interests and passions of each person. In the attached diagram, I’ve provided an example of this application for a luxury brand.

At the center of the marketing strategy is the market, not the brand.

Precision-guided marketing model by FORMO

The elements of their life that are most important to them are described in the first ring. I’ve adjusted the typeface so that the items that would have the most importance are the largest. As you can see, things like family, business, health all play very important roles in how we behave as consumers. But it is nearly impossible to act on those things as a marketer. But if you expand those primary factors outward into specific elements driven by those factors you find the actionable element. In other words, the very high motivation concerning family and children  is evidenced in selection of camps, sports & art activities; education, etc. Within these specific categories, I find the opportunity to cross their path as a brand.

If I can find ways to position my brand, authentically and honestly, within those secondary elements then I intersect the behavior of the consumer with the presence of my brand. I create a natural and logical connection.

Does it work?

Indeed and it works very well. You really have to go no further than your own behavior as a consumer. Put yourself in the center, create your first ring of important factors and expand that outward into the specific elements. Now consider the brands that are in that space, you know them.

Precision-guided marketing model by FORMO