Understand where you are, before deciding where to go.
We map demand, audience, competition and how your brand is known to the machines. The method is BIKMA — Brand Insight Knowledge Mapping Analytics — developed here with the University of Pisa, academically formalised in 2019, applied in over 200 enterprise projects. We work across six mapping dimensions, with the discipline of a scientific method and the speed of an operational consultancy.
A CMO managing an eight-figure budget makes strategic choices based on personal hypotheses, the incumbent agency’s pitch, generic industry reports, last year’s brief with minor edits. What is almost always missing is a data-driven map of the real territory: where the brand really sits, against whom it really competes, in which semantic territories it is present and where it is not, how it is represented across channels — including, today, Large Language Models.
The result is predictable: strategic plans built on intuition that produce flawless tactical activations on the wrong objectives. The problem is not the quality of execution: it is the quality of the frame within which execution moves. Without a map, every initiative is a bet with a margin of error proportional to the scale of the investment.
Market Mapping is the discipline that reverses this logic: the map first, decisions later.
We map explicit demand (what is searched in search engines and LLMs) and latent demand (what would be searched if the topic were already articulated as a category of thought). Output: a semantic map of the territory, with volumes, trends, seasonality, growth opportunities by cluster.
Behavioural clusters and segments based on real signals, not personas invented by the agency. Jobs-to-be-done framework, motivations, frictions, journey. We work with client first-party data when available, integrated with market panels and social analysis.
A map of the real competitive set, not just the declared one. Share of Search on traditional engines, Share of Voice in LLMs, Share of Presence on the relevant editorial channels. We identify white space, contested zones and ownership areas.
How your brand is known to the machines. The six BIKMA dimensions — demand, audience, share of voice in LLMs, knowledge sources, sentiment, fact alignment — applied to your competitive domain. It is the dimension most strategic consultants cannot offer.
Map of the category territory: where the brand sits today, where it should sit based on its declared positioning, where it can defensibly expand. Adjacency analysis, erosion-risk identification, map of accessible white space.
For brands operating in multiple countries: comparative analysis of the brand’s position in each market, identification of investment priorities by area, localisation-versus-globalisation decisions grounded in comparable data. It is the domain in which we operate most frequently with enterprise clients.
Our Market Mapping methodology is BIKMA — Brand Insight Knowledge Mapping Analytics. It was born in this business unit, out of the research collaboration started eight years ago with the University of Pisa. In 2019 the paper describing the model was selected and cited at The Web Conference in San Francisco. Since then the framework has been applied in over 200 enterprise projects.
We open the project with two or three working sessions together with the client’s marketing and strategy team. Goal: understand the scope, the strategic hypotheses in place, the decisions the mapping must support.
Data collection across all six BIKMA dimensions: search data, market panels, social listening, BIKMA platform for LLM data, client first-party when available. Typically 3–4 weeks.
Raw data becomes maps and clusters. Internal Fortop working sessions, peer review across business units, validation with the Pisa academic referee when the project requires methodological depth.
Numbers don’t speak for themselves. In this phase we build the narrative: what the map means for the client’s specific brand, which decisions the map suggests, where the trade-offs to be resolved lie.
Final output: an interactive map (Tableau or Looker dashboard), a strategic PDF for top management, a 6, 12 and 24-month activation roadmap, budget allocation guidance by priority cluster.
| Output | Form |
|---|---|
| Interactive market map | With the BIKMA platform |
| Strategic deck for top management | 30–45 slide PDF, executive-ready |
| Opportunity sizing by cluster | Quantification of white space and contested zones |
| Strategic priorities with rationale | The 5–7 main recommended moves, with rationale and trade-offs |
| Activation roadmap | 6/12/24-month operating plan, with dependencies and milestones |
| Investment allocation guidance | Budget allocation guidance by priority cluster |
| KPI | What it measures |
|---|---|
| Competitive set coverage | % of relevant competitors mapped across all dimensions |
| Depth of the demand map | Number of semantic clusters identified and validated |
| Alignment with business data | Consistency between mapping and real client sales data |
| Time from briefing to output | Typically 8–12 weeks for an enterprise project |
We are the right partner when the company is facing a major strategic decision: entry into a new market or a new category, post-merger repositioning or post-acquisition, launch of a significant new product, periodic strategic review within the CMO’s annual planning cycle.
We are the right partner when the incumbent agency delivers solid tactical execution but the strategic frame justifying the investments is missing. We are the right partner if you need a map that includes visibility in LLMs — a data point no traditional strategic consultant can produce today.
We are not the right partner if you need fast tactical execution without going through mapping.
We are not the right partner if you already have a strategic consultancy in place and are looking only for a tactical partner: we work poorly under another strategic thinker, because our method is the starting point, not a posteriori confirmation.
We are not the right partner for scopes that are too small: a serious Market Mapping requires 8–12 weeks of Fortop work, and only makes sense when the value of the decisions it feeds is proportional.