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Brand Advertisers on Multichannel Analytics

Brand advertisers work to develop the customer's familiarity with and impression of the company and its consumer brand, rather than immediate sales, which requires an entirely different approach to marketing.

EN: This chapter explains the concept of brand marketing to those who are wholly unfamiliar with the concept. I'll elide much of the passages taht discuss the very basics.

Building Brand Equity

A good analogy: Brand Equity is likened to potential energy, stored in the minds of the public, that is expected to later become kinetic and drive behaviors that are beneficial to the company.

Brand equity can be measured by a raw count of exposures, but it is more important to detect, where possible, the awareness and perception in the minds of people, regardless of whether they are existing customers, positional customers, or people who will never even buy the product you sell.

Since it does not generate immediate sales, but merely makes people more likely to be receptive to future offers, it's more difficult to get the financial gatekeepers to allocate budget - though companies that do brand marketing are satisfied that it has had a significant impact on their bottom line.

Even so, brand marketing is focused on the campaign, and measuring the strength of the brand before and after an action is taken.

Brand marketing depends more heavily on customer experience management than promotional messaging. While some advertising and PR is done to support brand, the strongest impressions are created by individuals' actual experience with the brand in real life.

Metrics for brand marketing tend to be weak. It is virtually impossible to draw a direct correlation to profitability, as brand building is a long-range process that does not concern itself with the next month's sales figures.

J.D. Power conducts surveys of customer satisfaction, perceptions of product quality, and buyer behavior, and these tend to be the benchmarks companies measure against.

Analysis and Prediction

Strategically, brand marketers must consider what messages to convey, what audiences to reach, how to execute (send message to audience), and how to allocate budget to their various initiatives. A great deal of analysis is necessary to determine which courses of action are the most fruitful.

Analysis is primarily done by survey: a sample of the population is examined (by interview, focus group, or survey) to determine what their current brand perceptions are, for both the brand in question and others against which it may be positioned.

Prediction is done by experiment: a sample of the population is experimented upon to determine, on a small scale, whether a message or medium has the intended effect before dollars are allocated to implement the plan on a larger scale.

There is also the concept of exposure decay: an message elicits a strong immediate reaction, but sentiments fade over time, so more messaging is necessary to reinforce. However, there are diminishing returns: the point at which the effectiveness of additional messaging to keep the brand in the mind of the consumer comes in smaller increments.

Marketing mix is discussed as a survey of various channels to determine which is most effective in reaching the audience and communicating the message. Generally, the marketer will choose a blend of media, each of which may be more of less effective to different audiences.

Measurement

Following in theme: measures are used to predict the outcome of a proposed campaign as well as to measure the outcome of an actual one.

Brand marketers can measure by means of surveying a population, but can also take into account observed behaviors. While their campaigns are not intended to drive immediate action, some action will precipitate: an image commercial will drive traffic to the company's site, even if it's to learn more about the firm rather than to order merchandise.

Measurements of brand equity also tend to be more qualitative: what emotions are associated with a brand is not something that can easily be tabulated, though one tends to follow this with an attempt to place such associations on a "range" in follow-on surveys.

Scanner data is also useful in seeing the effect of brand over longer periods of time, to monitor customer's buying behaviors in the absence of specific promotional campaigns.

Compiling word-of-mouth data gives you a sense of a brand's perception in an unscientific manner, but the opinions of a specific outspoken few are more often than not indicative of the opinions of a specific market segment in general.

Success Metrics for Brand Advertising

Operational metrics are used to assess how far one's advertising dollars are going:

Cost metrics determine the expense undertaken to reach the audience. Which is an effective way of determining which medium is most cost-effective in reaching the most people.

Qualitative measures determine the effectiveness of an ad on its audience. Each of these measures a "lift" in one specific target metric

Financial Metrics have been defined, but because brand marketing doesn't drive immediate sales, the association of success to financial results tends to be more tenuous:


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