Brand strategy

Positioning research plan

A 4-week research roadmap to align Amae Health's value proposition across markets — grounding messaging in real audience insight rather than internal assumption.

Strategy Stakeholder interviews Qualitative research Notion

Role: Marketing lead (owner) Timeline: 4 weeks Company: Amae Health 2026

Problem

Amae Health was expanding into multiple markets — New York, Bay Area, Los Angeles, Raleigh — but its messaging hadn't kept pace. The way the team described Amae internally didn't always match how referring providers, patients, or families experienced or understood the brand.

There was no unified positioning framework. Each audience segment (clinicians making referrals, members entering care, caregivers supporting them) heard significantly different value propositions. Without a shared language, it was difficult to scale marketing, align outreach, or differentiate against competitors with confidence.

Process

I designed a three-phase research plan to move Amae from assumption-based messaging to audience-grounded positioning.

Phase 1

Internal alignment & knowledge gathering

Conduct 45-minute interviews with leadership (CEO, clinical, product) and enrollment/outreach staff to surface how the team described Amae, where they saw differentiation, and what they heard from the market. Collect existing data, referral feedback, intake surveys, member testimonials, outreach objections, and facilitate a brand working session around competitive positioning, voice, and core identity.

Leadership interviews Enrollment team Data collection Brand working session

Phase 2

Qualitative interviews

Design structured interview guides for two external audiences: referring providers and patients/families. Provider interviews explored referral decision-making, trust signals, and perception of Amae's credibility. Patient/family interviews focused on how they found Amae, what nearly stopped them from joining, and how their understanding shifted after enrollment.

Referring providers Patients & families Structured interviews

Phase 3

Synthesis & positioning draft

Synthesize themes across all segments and identify where messaging needs to be universal versus tailored. Develop true audience personas, core differentiation statements, proof points, and audience-specific language and package everything into two deliverables.

Theme synthesis Audience personas Positioning framework

Outcome

Deliverable

Positioning brief

Audience personas, core differentiators, proof points, audience-specific language, and identified messaging gaps with recommendations.

Deliverable

Voice & tone guide

A definitive guide for how Amae shows up across channels, grounded in research.

Together, these gave the marketing, enrollment, and outreach teams a shared language for talking about Amae that was pressure-tested against what each audience actually cares about.