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# Smiling CFO: We show brand owners where to focus & how to win.

## Sitemaps
[XML Sitemap](https://smilingcfo.co.uk/sitemap_index.xml): Includes all crawlable and indexable pages.

## Posts
- [Brand Asset Examples: Distinctive Assets That Drive Recognition](https://smilingcfo.co.uk/blog/brand-asset-examples/): The brand asset examples in this article show how strong brands become easier to recognise before buyers have consciously processed the name, message or product claim.
- [Brand Consistency Examples: How Consistent Assets Build Recognition](https://smilingcfo.co.uk/blog/brand-consistency-examples/): Brand consistency is a memory-building discipline.
- [Brand Differentiation Examples: How Leading Brands Standout and Win Market Share.](https://smilingcfo.co.uk/blog/brand-differentiation-examples/): The Brand differentiation examples in this article show how companies become more recognisable and more strongly associated with the things that matter to category buyers. The strongest examples extend beyond product features. They combine a clear brand story, distinctive customer experience, recognisable assets and consistent behaviour across every buyer touchpoint.
- [Product Differentiation Examples: How to Create Competitive Advantage](https://smilingcfo.co.uk/blog/product-differentiation-examples/): The Product Differentiation examples in this article show how companies create a tangible reason for buyers to choose one offer rather than another. The difference may come from performance, design, technology, convenience, pricing, distribution or the structure of the offer itself.
- [Brand Tracking Surveys: A Practical Guide to Effective Brand Health Tracking.](https://smilingcfo.co.uk/blog/brand-tracking-surveys-a-practical-guide/): Brand tracking surveys are recurring research studies designed to measure how a brand is performing over time. Unlike one-off market research projects, which answer a specific question at a particular moment, a tracker creates continuity. It allows marketers to see whether awareness, consideration, usage, brand associations and Mental Availability are strengthening, weakening or remaining stable.
- [Customer Experience Strategy: How to Improve it Across Touchpoints](https://smilingcfo.co.uk/blog/customer-experience-strategy/): A strong Customer Experience Strategy acknowledges that consumers, and buyers, do not experience brands in one place. They move between channels, contexts and touchpoints, often switching between them several times before making a purchase.
- [Innovation Strategy Examples: Why Some Succeed While Others Fail](https://smilingcfo.co.uk/blog/innovation-strategy-examples/): Without a deep understanding of the situations, needs, and cues that drive consumer choice, NPD can fail to gain traction.
- [Optimise for AI Search Using Real Customer Demand](https://smilingcfo.co.uk/blog/optimise-for-ai-search/): To be surfaced at the right moment, whether by consumers or by AI engines, a brand must be mentally linked to the right Category Entry Points (CEPs).
- [Brand Portfolio Strategy: How to Manage Overlapping Brands](https://smilingcfo.co.uk/blog/brand-portfolio-strategy/): How do you manage two brands that consumers already see in largely the same way? The answer lies not in chasing short-term shifts in market share, but in applying a clear brand portfolio strategy with Mental Availability principles at its heart.
- [Why Mental Availability is More Powerful Than Awareness](https://smilingcfo.co.uk/blog/the-shortfalls-of-brand-awareness/): In many organisations, marketers are facing a familiar and frustrating situation. They are working harder than ever, investing in campaigns, refining positioning, and running robust brand health trackers. The reports show healthy levels of awareness and favourability. But high awareness doesn’t guarantee salience when it counts. Favourability doesn’t mean you’ll be chosen. Many brands find themselves in this uncomfortable in-between: detached from the buying situations they are well-liked and well-known, but too often when in the context of the buying situation they are not considered.
Something important may be missing from the measurement mix and that something could be Mental Availability.
- [Buyer Behaviour: How Mental Availability and Perception Influence Brand Choice](https://smilingcfo.co.uk/blog/buyer-behaviour-brand-choice/): Our job as marketers is to influence buyer behaviour. At SmilingCFO, we believe two concepts are critical in influencing why people choose one brand over another: Mental Availability and Perception.
- [How To Identify Growth Opportunities in a Market Using Category Entry Points](https://smilingcfo.co.uk/blog/identify-growth-opportunities-market/): If you’re responsible for brand strategy, one of the most valuable analyses you can conduct as part of your market orientation is understanding the retrieval cues buyers use in different purchasing situations.
- [Brand Growth Strategy: Four Themes Behind Stronger Brand Performance](https://smilingcfo.co.uk/blog/brand-growth-strategy/): An overview of the brand growth strategies being deployed by leading organisations.
- [Marketing Analysis Framework: 5 Steps to Find Growth Opportunities Using Category Entry Points](https://smilingcfo.co.uk/blog/marketing-analysis-framework/): We show how CEPs help tie brand metrics to business metrics
- [A Category Entry Point Case Study for Chocolate](https://smilingcfo.co.uk/blog/category-entry-point-case-study-chocolate/): How to grow Mental Market Share by building 'Mental Penetration'
- [Marketing Effectiveness: How to Build Team Capability for Brand Growth](https://smilingcfo.co.uk/blog/marketing-effectiveness/): Companies that embed Marketing Effectiveness principles into their organisation are the companies that will win
- [Brand Budget: How to Focus Spend for Brand Growth](https://smilingcfo.co.uk/blog/brand-budget/): We offer a set of guidelines and some shared experiences to help you make the most of the budget available to you.
- [Demand Spaces and Mental Availability:  How they work together](https://smilingcfo.co.uk/blog/demand-spaces/): Why Category Entry Points are the vital link between Mental Availability and Demand space theory.
- [Brand Planning Process: 6 Ways to Build Better Commercial Plans](https://smilingcfo.co.uk/blog/brand-planning-process/): This article is written with a CMO or Brand Leader in mind and concentrates on uniting the commercial function behind a compelling brand plan.
- [Challenger Brand Strategy: How Smaller Brands Can Win](https://smilingcfo.co.uk/blog/challenger-brand-strategy/): We offer a set of actions that will help grow Mental & Physical Availability and close the gap to the big brands.
- [Brand Investment:  How CMOs and CFOs Can Align Around Growth](https://smilingcfo.co.uk/blog/brand-investment/): Martin Coyle shares what he found to be the most effective way to build a partnership with his CFO.
- [Mental Availability Assessment: 6 Stages to Better Brand Strategy](https://smilingcfo.co.uk/blog/mental-availability-assessment/): In this article we walk you through how to use the results to inform stronger hypotheses and objectives that ultimately lead to a better brand strategy.
- [Brand Strategy Framework: How to Build a Strategy Worth Investing In](https://smilingcfo.co.uk/blog/brand-strategy-framework/): The best brand leaders don’t spend months on brand planning, here’s why…
- [Mental and Physical Availability: How Brands Become Easy to Think of and Buy](https://smilingcfo.co.uk/blog/mental-and-physical-availability/): No matter the size of your brand there is ample evidence to show that you will gain an advantage if your brand is easy to recall and easy to buy.

## Pages
- [Mental Availability Review](https://smilingcfo.co.uk/mental-availability-review/): For a brand to come to mind in buying situations it has to be associated with the ‘Category Entry Points’ buyers use to access brands from their memory.
- [Contact](https://smilingcfo.co.uk/contact/): Follow Us
- [How](https://smilingcfo.co.uk/how/): A SmilingCFO Mental Availability Assessment identifies the Category Entry Points that are likely to be used most often in the moments that matter. We then assess the brand’s opportunities for growth relative to competitors.
- [Mental availability metrics explained](https://smilingcfo.co.uk/mental-availability-metrics-explained/): Mental availability measurement shows how strongly and widely a brand is linked in memory to the Category Entry Points that influence buying situations.
- [What are Category Entry Points (CEPs)](https://smilingcfo.co.uk/what-are-category-entry-points/): Category Entry Points (CEPs) are the cues buyers use to enter the category and retrieve brands from memory.
- [Mental Availability vs Brand Awareness](https://smilingcfo.co.uk/mental-availability-vs-brand-awareness/): Brand awareness measures recognition. Mental availability measures whether buyers retrieve the brand when a buying situation occurs. A brand can be well known but rarely recalled at the moment of choice.
- [What Is Mental Availability](https://smilingcfo.co.uk/what-is-mental-availability/): Mental availability is the likelihood that a brand comes to mind in a buying situation.
- [Who](https://smilingcfo.co.uk/who/): People don’t think of brands in isolation. They think of them in the context of specific buying situations.
- [Home](https://smilingcfo.co.uk/): SmilingCFO helps brands grow by increasing Mental Availability in the buying situations that matter most.
- [Blog](https://smilingcfo.co.uk/blog/)