Understand where you are, before deciding where to go.
We map demand, audience, competition and the way your brand is known by machines. The method is developed here in-house with the University of Pisa and the collaboration of the University of Insubria, cited at The Web Conference, applied in over 200 enterprise projects. We work with the discipline of a scientific method and the speed of operational consulting.
A CMO managing an eight-figure budget makes strategic decisions based on personal hypotheses, the incumbent agency’s pitch, generic industry reports, last year’s brief with small corrections. What’s almost always missing is a data-driven map of the real territory: where the brand actually stands, whom it competes against, which semantic territories it occupies and which it doesn’t, how it’s represented across channels — including AI answer engines today.
The result is predictable: strategic plans built on intuition that produce impeccable tactical activations against the wrong objectives. The problem isn’t execution quality: it’s the quality of the frame within which execution moves.
Market Mapping inverts this logic: the map first, then the decisions.
We map explicit demand (what is searched on engines and asked of AI models) 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 and growth opportunities per cluster.
Behavioural clusters and segments based on real signals, not invented personas. Jobs-to-be-done framework, motivations, friction, journey. We work with the client’s first-party data when available, integrated with market panels and social analysis.
Map of the real competitive set, not just the declared one. Share of Search in traditional engines, Share of Voice in AI engines, Share of Presence across relevant editorial channels. We identify white space, contested zones and ownership areas.
Where the brand stands today, where it should stand based on its declared positioning, where it can defensibly expand. Adjacency analysis, erosion risk, map of accessible white space.
For brands operating across multiple countries: position comparison per market with native-language prompts, not translated from an English set, and data stored in the EU. An audit run in English systematically underestimates local brands. It’s the domain where we most often work with enterprise clients.
Born in this business unit from the research collaboration started with the University of Pisa, with the contribution of the University of Insubria; the model was cited at The Web Conference and today is anchored to the most recent scientific literature. The guiding principle: if the question set is arbitrary, every number is arbitrary. That’s why we build questions from the real conversation of the market and weight them with the Prompt Probability Index.
Two or three sessions with the client’s marketing and strategy team. Goal: understand the scope, the strategic hypotheses in place and the decisions the mapping must support.
Collection across all dimensions: search data, market panels, social listening, the BIKMA platform for AI model data, client first-party data when available. Typically 3–4 weeks.
Raw data becomes maps and clusters. Internal Fortop workshop, peer review across business units, validation with the academic partner when the project requires methodological depth.
Numbers don’t speak for themselves. We build the narrative: what the map means for the specific brand, which decisions it suggests, where the trade-offs need resolving.
Final output: a strategic document for top management, an activation roadmap at 6, 12 and 24 months, and budget allocation guidance by priority cluster.
| Output | Form |
|---|---|
| Strategic deck for top management | PDF of 30–45 slides, executive-ready |
| Opportunity sizing per cluster | Quantification of white space and contested zones |
| Strategic priorities with rationale | The 5–7 recommended moves, with rationale and trade-offs |
| Activation roadmap | Operational plan 6 / 12 / 24 months, with dependencies and milestones |
| Investment allocation guidance | Budget allocation by priority cluster |
| KPI | What it measures |
|---|---|
| Competitive set coverage | % of relevant competitors mapped across all dimensions |
| Depth of demand map | Number of semantic clusters identified and validated |
| Alignment with business data | Consistency between mapping and the client’s real sales data |
| Time from briefing to output | Typically 8–12 weeks for an enterprise project |
We’re the right partner when a large company is facing a major strategic decision: entering a new market or category, post-merger repositioning, launching a significant new product, periodic strategic review in the CMO’s annual planning cycle.
We’re the right partner when the incumbent agency brings solid tactical execution but the strategic frame that justifies the investment is missing.
And we’re the right partner if you need a map that includes visibility in AI answer engines — a data point that no traditional strategy consultant can produce today.