“Don’t mistake your opinion with marketing data.” This was a mantra of a previous boss I had. He was right. BUT by stopping there, he was missing a key element to drive positive outcomes.
Far too many people believe that data tells you what you need to do to drive winning business results. And on top of that, most marketers use their own subjectivity to explain what that data indicates.
Last week, I engaged with someone that posted on LinkedIn about his experience wasting much time mulling over the results of consumer sales. Much of the conclusions derived were erroneous. That is until he truly dug in to understand the consumers’ behavior.
Here is the conversation we exchanged as a result of his post:
“To what extent do you believe ‘psychology’ plays a role in marketing?” –
95% replied 100% or strongly.
According to Wikipedia, “Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts.”
As marketing professionals, our mission is to drive business success. And psychology plays an imperative role in that success from (at least) two perspectives:
1) From an input perspective, we need to truly understand the mind and behavior of our target audience as it relates to our product/service, their knowledge of the space and our products/service, points of influence, what their consumer journey looks like, competition, and ways to emotionally connect with them.
2) From an output perspective, we need to first listen and communicate, and then engage in a manner that is most compelling to the target audience based upon THEIR feelings and behaviors.
There are far too many smart people that carry deep subjectivity that cloud their ability to drive business success. There are far too many people that have a strong opinion about marketing but lack either meaningful data and/or understanding of their target audience. Successful marketing leaders use both empirical data and in-depth target audience research to yield strong business success.
Collect data that provides accurate information. But don’t stop there. Examine your consumers/clients. Learn about their buyer journey. Learn what influences them in their purchase decisions. Learn how to motivate them and their decisions to yield preference for your product/services. Connect. Listen. Engage.
Marketing success comes with the right mix of data and then, enriched research and understanding.
Why invest in content marketing? Do you actually have a content strategy? Why use social media? Consider these questions and get prudent answers …
Simply stated, content marketing is useless without a content strategy. Recently, I read an article “Moving From Content Marketing to Content Strategy” According to the article, 8 in 10 companies use content marketing, but less than 4 in 10 enterprises have and use a buyer journey. Thus, I want to share with three considerations for a content strategy.
1) Start with a Brand Definition and Product Positioning Statement
The brand is at the core of it all. You cannot have a successful product/service, content plan, and communication execution without a solid brand definition and position. “The goal of brand marketing is to link your identity, values, and personality with communications to your audience. Essentially, your brand is the bridge between your product and your customer. Brand marketing is not just about putting your logo and business name in as many places as possible and expecting to generate sales. Many times, the importance of brand marketing gets overlooked, as it takes time. Many marketing departments are focused on short-term goals, rather than nurturing long-term goals that impact the entire business, like building a brand.” (Source)
What is a brand strategy?
A brand strategy can be hard to define but encompasses:
What your brand stands for.
What promises your brand makes to customers.
What personality your brand conveys through its marketing.
Here are three things every brand needs to define:
So you believe you have a strong product or service for a defined target market. Your next step is that you need a positioning statement that succinctly defines your offering. Here is the product positioning statement:
For …………….………… [target customer]
Who ……………….……. [key qualifier – form]
Our product is a ….. [product category]
That provides ………. [key benefit]
Unlike ………………….. [main competitor]
Our product ……….… [key point of differentiation]
This positioning statement is for internal use only. It is not explicitly communicated. The positioning statement should drive your content and communication plan. All content and communication should support and reinforce the product/service positioning statement.
Content Strategy
Your content strategy is the intersection of the brand and product strategy coupled with your target audience behaviors, needs, wants, and motivations. You should lean more to what is compelling to your audience than pushing your own brand agenda. Your content strategy objective is to get your target audience emotionally attached to your brand.
I have written an extremely detailed content strategy playbook that can be found here:
The series provides the following:
Content Marketing Goals and Objectives
Determining your Target Audience for Content
Leveraging Your Brand Position to Produce Compelling Content
Social Audits to Drive Content Marketing
Messaging Strategy Before Content Strategy
Developing a Content Marketing Strategy
How Do You Know Your Content Will Pay Dividends
Content Marketing Metrics
The Power of Orchestrated UGC – (User Generated Content)
Earned Media – Finding Influencers to Distribute your Content
What Does It Mean to Produce Data Driven Content?
How to Determine Which Content is Driving Success for Your Brand
Communication Strategy
The communication strategy should be driven by your target audience behaviors – the platforms they are active on and how they are influenced. Understanding your audience behavior will drive you to a communication plan. Your communication methodology must include a plan that utilizes owned, earned, and paid media. It also needs to address the use of original, curated, user-generated, and influencer content.
2) Integrating Owned, Earned, and Paid Media
Look at the figure above. Across the x axis, you can see there are three time phases of a campaign defined – pre-reveal, reveal, and post reveal. The horizontals on the y axis are three different media types. Starting with owned media, it is good to leak some content early on. This could be in the form of a teaser, trailer, or even releasing excerpts before the big promotion or reveal. By doing so, you start to create some interests and following. It primes earned media for the official reveal, promotion, or release. Obviously the reveal or promotion time is when most of your content is released. But there is also an opportunity to produce and release content after the promotion. Content that talks to and summarizes the event or launch and reinforces the reveal in a compelling and entertaining way.
“Earned media is coverage or promotion of your brand through organic means. It’s a very effective form of content marketing and is also the toughest media type to get.” It includes reviews, media coverage, guest posts, mentions, social shares, and (free) influencers. (Source) Earned media is leveraging your audience and advocates to help circulate and further promote your content. It starts by having content that is worthy of sharing. Assuming that is in place, you seed your content or provide references to it in places where your audience exists.
Paid media execution should take place during the actual promotion time. This is both an economical and strategic decision. Economic because you want to minimize expenses; strategic in that it focuses at the premiere time. Maximize exposure – minimize expenses doing so.
3) Understand the A-Path for Social Media to Optimize Users’ Experience and Content Marketing Results
This chart above is referred to as the “A-Path.” As a brand, first you want to get your targets’ “Attention.” Then you want them to be “Attracted” to you. Once the targets are attracted to the brand, we want them to build “Affinity” for the brand. As they start to build affinity for the brand, we want the targets to literally opt-in to be part of the brand “Audience.” A subset of the Audience will be power users and look to turn these individuals into brand “Advocates.”
In the beginning of this A-Path we work off of the brand’s assets (or the non-brand digital assets – the whole universe of digital conversations that are not owned by the brand). We monitor the entire digital space for relevant conversations and engage with the consumer where the conversations are happening. We then refer these people to the brand’s digital assets and build Affinity by producing valuable (informative and entertaining) content. As we build Affinity, we offer opportunities to join the brand assets (follow, like, register). We then identify the power users and engage one-on-one to build advocates.
Note that the strategy of following this A-Path approach is to start to attract your target audience in digital spaces they participate in and slowly bring them to your digital assets. Company pages on platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Tik-Tok, etc are NOT your digital assets. You do not own them and you are subject to their rules, and regulations. They should be perceived as gateways to YOUR digital assets such as your website, blog, and landing pages.
CONCLUSION AND HELP TO MAKE IT HAPPEN
Content strategy is the essence of brand communication. A content strategy should be aimed at increasing your audience and their “stickiness” to your brand. Don’t just produce content. Align a content strategy with the journey of your customer/client. Invest in the upfront work and see measurable results.
How do you feel? Really, how do you feel? The past couple of years has really paid its toll on many people’s mental well being. It is time to move forward to a better quality of life. And that is much easier said than done. How does one dig themself out of negativity? Answer: with help. And YOU are the help that other people need.
“Researchers and leaders have looked for the secret to successful leadership for centuries … The one thing that supersedes all these factors is positive relational energy: the energy exchanged between people that helps uplift, enthuse, and renew them.” (Source)
It is up to YOU to make people feel better – uplift them, enthuse them, and renew them. Interested in doing so?
You can, and should be the one. Whether that is for your own personal success or truly wanting to help others, it is in your best interest to push and sell positivity. From my perspective, it is all about “motivation” as opposed to “fear.” Untap your team. Make each individual reach their potential. Encourage collaboration and unify.
I have worked in many different environments, for many different bosses. I have had ones that have been great motivators via positive energy, encouraging challenges, and efforts to get the most out of me. I have also worked for bosses that were brutal and worked to instill fear as part of their management style. A couple even to the point of emotional abuse. When I look back on my career, I can say unequivocally that my greatest professional successes have come from environments that were motivational. A large and growing body of research on positive organizational psychology demonstrates that a cut-throat environment is harmful to productivity over time. It adds that a positive environment will lead to dramatic benefits for employers, employees, and the bottom line as stated in the article in Harvard Business Review, “Proof That Positive Work Cultures Are More Productive.”
I will take this theme of “positivity” one step further as it relates to business. Your brand presence and marketing needs to be positive and uplifting. You need to instill promise, hope, and inspiration to your target audience. Just about everyone has had some degree of mental setback in the past couple of years and they need to be uplifted. A great example of this approach to marketing is an advertisement Google ran at the end of 2021 shown here:
It is time for business leaders to take part in shaping the future of society, communities, and individuals. Businesses have a great degree of impact on all these groups. And whether you truly care about your customers/clients or solely your revenue/profit, there are strong reasons to promote positivity in your professional life. It is time!
If your marketing efforts are working, there are two characteristics you want from a target audience reaction – NEED and LOVE. You want your audience to feel they NEED your product/service and you want them to LOVE your brand.
Lead generation requires a couple of prerequisite steps in order to yield winning results. Are your conversion campaigns driving the results you are looking for? If not, maybe you are missing a key element.
This past week I had a call with a prospective client. She wanted to run a paid ad promo to get people to purchase her “service” for Mother’s Day – 1 month away. She shared with me that she ran a similar paid ad promo for Valentine’s Day and needless to say it bombed. Her expectation was that she would run targeted paid media ads on Facebook and get people to sign up for a monthly subscription. I basically told her there was little chance of success because she was missing two key elements.
When was the last time you saw a sponsored ad, did not know anything about the brand, and followed through on the brand’s CTA (call to action)? If you have never acted in this manner, how can you expect others to do it when you run your marketing campaigns?
Brand Building is key to successful lead generation success. There are two elements of brand building that must be in place before you run lead generation campaigns.
Brand Strategy
Brand Building starts with brand strategy.
A brand strategy can be hard to define but encompasses:
What your brand stands for.
What promises your brand makes to customers.
What personality your brand conveys through its marketing.
Here are three things every brand needs to define:
Audience Development is part of brand building and is a key prerequisite of lead generation. You can Google “touch points before purchase” and find various reports that indicate numerous touch points are required before a purchase is made. One source states that it takes 5 to 20 touch points. Granted, this is quite a wide spread that really does not zero in on the exact number, but suffice it to say,it is not one ad that will lead to a conversion. You need to communicate your brand story and product positioning to your target audience before hitting them with a CTA ad.
“Audience development is all about: building and nurturing a crowd of loyal people and customers around your brand who constantly engage with you and keep coming back for more.” (Source) You might ask, “how can you use audience development to generate leads if audience development conditions existing customers?”
I will give you an example of an approach that I am using with a current client. The client is a start up with minimal following and awareness of their service.
Step 3 – Publish content on your blog and social media channels.
Step 4 – Boost your post to your targeted audience using a set audience definition on social platforms driven by behaviors and demographics.
Step 5 – When people “like” your post, invite them to follow your brand.
These five steps result in increased awareness for your product/brand and increase your audience following. This means that subsequent posts and paid media will increase your audience reach. Thus you are building an audience prior to producing CTA ads. If you work on brand building (brand strategy and audience development) prior to lead generation activities, I guarantee you that your lead generation will yield higher measurable results.
While brand building is not a short term objective, it makes your short term lead generation more successful.
“Branding is a concept that extends far beyond the marketing of ‘brand name’ designer jeans and other products. A company’s brand represents their market identity—who they are, what they do, what kind of quality they provide, their reputation for trustworthiness, and more.” (Source)
Brand Marketing at Its Worst
This past week, I was reminded of foolish brand marketing. Vice President, Analyst and Gartner Fellow, Augie Ray published a spot-on LinkedIn post this week. Augie was questioning how brands change their persona for April Fools Day and in part, he stated:
“… A brand can’t be colorless and provide mediocre customer experiences 364 days a year, then change people’s minds with a tweeted joke. No one’s ever said, “I’ve been disappointed with that brand’s products and hate their customer service, but dammit, I just have to stay loyal because their social media April Fools posts rock.”
… Brands have personalities, but successful ones are crafted with consistency. You don’t change minds with an uncharacteristic joke posted on the same day every other brand is posting its uncharacteristic jokes. If your comms, ads, and engagement are otherwise dry, commercial, brand-focused, and sales-oriented, focus less on your April Fools strategy and more on your brand personality the rest of the year.”
Trying to be funny and snarky is likely “off-brand.” Go back to the original definition of brand marketing at the top of this article. Off-brand is the opposite of that description and is a marketing failure. I would predict that 99 times out of 100, attempts by brands at April Fools posts fail. If they do create product awareness, they are introducing their audience to an erroneous persona. April Fools posts do not increase brand reputation and they do not yield deeper product consideration or conversion.
Brand Marketing at Its Best
Conversely, I saw a great example of brand marketing while watching the NCAA Final Four. Google nailed it with their “Get Back to What you Love”. Watch this commercial:
Why do I feel Google nailed it? The commercial is pretty simple. It lacks star power both in the way of celebrity cameos and aesthetics. But the commercial displays the three imperative ingredients that bring a brand to life to increase an audience’s interest to use your product/service. They are:
The ability to make a point(s) via storytelling
Creating an emotional response from your audience
Subtly demonstrating product value
Storytelling is important because it is the most natural way to get points across. Psychology Today explains why people embrace stories in their article, “The Psychological Power of Storytelling.” They state, “Our brains still respond to content by looking for the story to make sense out of the experience … Stories are authentic human experiences.”
One of the best ways to win over an audience is to create an emotional bond with them. The Google ad starts out with “words” we all understand. Each of us have experienced what they talk about in the past year. That draws us in emotionally, but then they continue to take a “challenging” experience and provide an uplifting message of hope. How can your brand express a reality and then make others feel better about the future?
And the last piece of bringing a brand to life is likely the most difficult. After all, most companies are for-profit companies and their objective is to sell their goods. So if we need to use marketing to sell, how can we do so without being overly aggressive? I go back to the days when I would write “whitepapers” for technology companies. A whitepaper should state a problem, provide a solution to the problem, and then quietly state, “our product provides you the solution.” 95% of the paper is about the problem and solution, and only about 5% is about your brand.
While the entire Google commercial “shows” their product, the focus is overshadowed by the story they tell. I cannot emphasize enough how well this is done.
So how does one go about creating pinnacle brand marketing as opposed to mediocre brand marketing. The answer to that is Killer Creative Briefs, which is the subject of my previous article on this blog. There is a method to great marketing.
Right to the point – killer creative briefs make the difference between a great marketing campaign and anything less than that.
Rhetorical question – are you satisfied with anything less than great?
Let’s first get some simple definitions on the table.
“A creative brief is a document that informs the creative approach and delivery of new marketing or advertising campaigns. It connects the requested creative work to the broader business goals by clearly outlining the strategy of the campaign.” (Source)
These 7 steps give you the foundation for writing a creative brief, but what does it mean to have a killer creative brief. I would say all these steps are important but there are three key elements.
First and foremost, it is imperative that you have a deep understanding of your target audience. This means understanding their desires, motivations, and needs. Highlight these areas when you describe the target audience. Give your creative team a detailed description so they can truly envision who they are speaking to.
The next key element of a killer creative brief is having a clear definition of the objective of the campaign and potential challenges to accomplish this objective. Explicitly state what you want the takeaway to be from the creative output. Understand there is a difference between a “takeaway” and what is explicitly communicated. (See Understanding “The Takeaway” is Key to Great Content for further information.) The takeaway should detail how you want the target audience to feel; what actions you want them to take.
The third element is truly understanding your brand. By this I mean the “Why” of your brand as Simon Sinek so keenly emphasizes. Also, understand your brand’s voice – specifically the brand’s persona, language, tone, and subject matter. Here are some examples as they apply to the brand voice:
In summary, there are three imperative elements to killer creative briefs.
Deep understanding of the audience the marketing campaign is meant for – provide knowledgeable detail to your creative team.
Define the objective of the marketing campaign – do not try to write the copy for the objective, but rather detail the takeaway of the objective.
Understand and stay true to your brand – continually reinforcing your brand identity, values, and voice will build long-term success. Switching these characteristics for a specific marketing endeavor will cause confession and mistrust from the intended target audience.
Yes, all of the seven steps from HubSpot’s guidance as mentioned above need to be included, but the stellar definition of the three key elements will definitely be the difference between a killer creative brief and one that is just OK.
You can find a number of Creative Brief Templates here.
Like many of you stuck within the confines of our home, my family and I try to figure out what to watch on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple TV, and/or Hulu on any given night. One night, my wife suggested Hillbilly Elegy – she read the book and loved it. I checked the critic reviews on Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes – and the movie was pretty much panned. I mentioned this to her and she said, yes, but it is a worthwhile story to hear.
Should we watch a movie (or consume any content) if it is a good story but poor content production? Or for that matter, what happens when you don’t have a good story from the start?
If you read that article, you might recall my Brand-Product-Content-Communication model where I emphasized the “brand” is the core of marketing. “The goal of brand marketing is to link your identity, values, and personality with communications to your audience. Essentially, your brand is the bridge between your product and your customer.” (Source: https://blog.rebrandly.com/what-is-brand-marketing/) Storytelling needs to happen within brand definition. The “why” and the storytelling of your brand product/service should strongly resonate with your target audience.
“To become a brand storyteller, you must find the great stories to tell, have a process of telling them, and have the right people to tell the stories. The brand is never the protagonist in storytelling; rather, it plays the part of the solution or the vehicle through which the story is told. The story is instead focused on what people care about, which humanizes the story. The effect is often subtle, but impactful.” (Source: Mohanbir Sawhney – https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-become-brand-storyteller-mohanbir-sawhney
Copywriting – Because Words Are Important
At one point in my career, I was the head of product marketing and my boss, a brilliant Chief Marketing Officer with a PhD in Cognitive Psychology would always remind me, words matter.
Copywriting is the act or occupation of writing text for the purpose of advertising or other forms of marketing. The product, called copy or sales copy, is written content that aims to increase brand awareness and ultimately persuade a person or group to take a particular action. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copywriting
But notice a big difference here – as I state in my Brand-Product-Content-Communication Model copywriting happens in content strategy/planning. Storytelling happens in brand strategy/planning.
Wrap Up
Storytelling is not the same as copywriting. A “copywriter” is not necessarily a storyteller.
Storytelling and copywriting are different skill sets (although, an individual may have both proficiencies) and in successful marketing what we really need is both. Storytelling, as an endeavor, happens in a different marketing function than copywriters typically practice. Far too many brands ignore brand development and the importance of storytelling scripts as an imperative function within brand development.
It is easy to think of storytelling and copywriting as the same, but they really are different and happen in different stages of Marketing Strategy and Planning. But the outcome of both storytelling and copywriting are executed in “Communication.”
“Catch the mood and be there given that mood – just like music.”
It is really that simple. That is the future of marketing. But I want to take it a bit deeper and explain why.
Business leaders I respect talk about the importance of emotional intelligence and empathy. I too agree that these skills are paramount. But what does that mean with regards to marketing execution?
People have been emotionally turned upside down from this pandemic. I would find it hard to believe that when this tragedy is over (and it will end), no one, is just going to return “normality” as we have known from the past. We all will have different emotions from time to time – happy ones; and not so happy ones – at various times and triggered by other events (both good and bad). Successful brands will learn to adapt as our rollercoaster life progresses through our journeys. They will need to adapt to inspire and sympathize at different times driven by their target audiences’ mood.
If there is one example I can think of that perfectly aligns to mood swings it would be the music you listen to. Instead of thinking about compelling marketing, stop for a second and think about music that is compelling to you. You listen to music that serves your mood. When do you listen to calming music, jamming music, feel-good music. It is driven by your mood. What if your brand had this insight to its target audiences’ moods and served up something compelling at the right time?
Of course, there are many strategies, plans, executions, and data collecting and analysis to be done, but if you lead the marketing of a brand, hopefully this explains why The Future of Marketing reads like this.…
“Catch the mood and be there given that mood – just like music.”
Simple is hard. So I offer you 3 slides that describe how to drive successful marketing. The following are (simplified) excerpts from previous articles I have written.
Brand Proliferation – Slide 1
Brand marketing has to be the start of marketing.
Brand
The brand is at the core of it all. You cannot have successful marketing without a solid brand definition and position. The goal of brand marketing is to link your identity, values, and personality with communications to your audience. Essentially, your brand is the bridge between your product and your customer. Brand marketing is not just about putting your logo and business name in as many places as possible and expecting to generate sales.
Content
Once a strong and compelling brand definition and story have been defined, a content strategy is needed. Brands need to think like publishers. A publisher worries about producing content that people like and want to read or view. They create ways to make sure people come back and consume more. Brands have the opportunity to stay top of mind to drive brand preference. Brand content should address specific areas of interest for the target market and not necessarily talk about the brand or product/service. The topics covered should be tangentially related to brand offerings.
Sharing
Once there is a solid content foundation and plan, then you are ready to start thinking about social media marketing. Not before. Social media platforms are a set of distribution points for your content. Social media channels allow you to share your content. But sharing the content on social channels is not enough. You need to provoke engagement, conversations, and other people sharing your content.
Sharing content on brand social channels drives increased awareness and consideration for your brand.
Advocates
As you start to use social media to distribute content, you will find specific people that actively share your brand content pieces on a regular basis. These people represent potential brand advocates. Make sure you reach out to them. When you engage with these potential influencers, learn more about things that matter to them. Listen and let their input shape future content and social posts. Advocates are not only the greatest ambassadors of brands, but they also help you zero in on compelling brand content for your target audience.
Integrating Owned, Earned, and Paid Media – Slide 2
Looking vertically across the x axis, you can see there are three time phases defined – pre-reveal, reveal, and post reveal. It is important to recognize there is opportunity and synergy for each of these phases.
The horizontals on the y axis are three different media types. Starting with owned media, it is good to leak some content early on. This could be in the form of a teaser, trailer, or even releasing excerpts before the big promotion or reveal. By doing so, you start to create some interests and following. It primes earned media for the official reveal, promotion, or release. Obviously the reveal or promotion time is when most of your content is released. But there is also an opportunity to produce and release content after the promotion. Content that talks to and summarizes the event or launch and reinforces the reveal in a compelling and entertaining way.
Earned media is leveraging your audience and advocates to help circulate and further promote your content. It starts by having content that is worthy of sharing. Assuming that is in place, you seed your content or provide references to it in places where your audience exists.
Paid media execution takes place during the actual promotion time. This is both an economical and strategic decision. Economic because you want to minimize expenses; strategic in that it focuses at the premiere time. Maximize exposure – minimize expenses doing so.
Optimizing User Experience via Social Marketing – Slide 3
This slide above is referred to as the “A-Path” of digital marketing as we aim to build deeper relationships between brand and target audiences. There are different levels of brand-target relationships. As a brand, first you want to get your targets’ “Attention.” Then you want them to be “Attracted” to you. Once the targets are attracted to the brand, we want them to build “Affinity” for the brand. As they start to build affinity for the brand, we want the target to literally opt-in to be part of the brand “Audience.” A subset of the Audience will be power users and look to turn these individuals into brand “Advocates.”
In the beginning of this A-Path we work off of the brand’s assets (or the non-brand digital assets – the whole universe of digital conversations and mentions such as blog posts, other twitter accounts, etc.). We monitor the entire digital space for relevant conversations and engage with the consumer where the conversations are happening. We then refer these people to the brand’s digital assets and build Affinity by producing valuable (informative and entertaining) content. As we build Affinity, we offer opportunities to join the brand assets (follow, like, register). We then identify the power users and engage one-on-one to build advocates.
In summary, I suggest starting with brand strategy. Determine your brand’s value proposition, position, and story of why you entered your business sector. Then define your target audience and have complete empathy for them. Be client/customer-focused and plan content that inspires them. Determine how you will reach them via owned, earned, and paid media. Have an engagement plan to optimize user experience using the A-Path.
SocialSteve's Blog 