Krishal Mehta VP-Media BC Web Wise
A significant share of Digital marketing is now focusing on targeted-performance marketing: personalized messages, direct messages, Buy Now, and form fills with partial or zero branding support. The brands now think and feel everyone knows my brand is the best, with limited awareness or low awareness due to cluttered ad space. Brands want to drive ROI through sales, leads, walk-ins, or footfalls.
Marketers miss the entire consumer journey. The offline brand manager focuses on offline media channels, similar to the Digital brand manager concentrating on users’ digital journey. They need to take advantage of the consumers’ holistic journey.
Source: Red Crow Marketing
According to experts, the average person sees between 4,000 to 10,000 ads daily.
Just think about it for a second.
Every other post on social media is a sponsored ad, paid partnership, or subtle brand integration. A busy street will leave you exposed to dozens of billboards, shopping windows or ads on a wheel (car/bus branding)
Few categories focus on performance ads only. For example, automobile, Insurance, Banking, and now FMCG are moving in the same segment; everyone is now doing push ads vs pull ads or content-centric ads.
It leads to an unclear understanding of performance marketing campaigns. Just promoting sales-driven or offer-driven communication does not work anymore. Further, it worsens Upper and middle-funnel spending across media channels and affects the bottom conversion funnel. Today we are talking to SMART CONSUMER, who is curious, at the same time, meticulous and not necessarily a compulsive buyer on the other side; they research and are very well informed about the product or service.
I believe Data-driven plus “Performance Focused Branding” with disciplined will give marketers an edge when it comes to achieving TOFU (Top of Funnel) and balancing it with BOFU (Bottom of the funnel).
Existing models, cross-channel MROI or Marketing-Mix Modelling (MMM) or Multi-touch attribution (MTA) are more focused on late-funnel stages, not granular in terms of data, focused on past data and, more importantly, no real-time support for optimization.
Performance Branding with massive Data clubbed with machine learning, and deep tech enables brands to work on real-time optimization. In this, the first and most crucial stage is to track ever-changing consumer preference and map it correctly with Customer-Data-Platform (CDP). The CDP will incorporate data from internal, external, and third parties in alignment with GDPR policies.
The best example is Billy Beane (Former General Manager), who deployed data and analytics to field a competitive baseball team on a low budget in the movie Money Ball.
We’ve already implemented and are working closely with research agencies to identify CDP for categories like luggage, personal care, insurance, and automobile, and we’ve started deploying CDP with a single view platform which provides today’s marketers to effectively take the decision in real time with right-data touch points.
The Performance Branding Model
Earlier brands used to drive campaigns with set objectives, and even now, many brands have different branding and performance team. Just imagine a bike whose front and back are moving in a different direction. The brand won’t be able to reach its targeted destination.
The brand Building Team focuses on Awareness, Reach, Views, CTR, VTR etc., plus many other metrics. Performance Team focuses on sales, leads, and visits as per the brand objective. Even new D2C brands have suddenly taken up direct sales routes with only performance campaigns.
The model which we follow comprises four steps:
1. Crafting a Brand Strategy: Comprises multiple things, a few of which include competitive mapping, pain points, customer personas, unique value proposition, and brand DNA. It is more to identify the right audience which can be married to the brand.
2. Implementing System: Basis the brand DNA and audience behaviour, we need to understand the communication which will drive growth. This communication is not only copy but visual elements, classifying where the brand wants to be in the next three to five years.
3. Long & Short:
The long strategy here talks about owning a particular communication or channel example: Dove’s Real Beauty Campaign or Amul’s out-of-home strategy on the current issue. The short strategy will be deploying a small burst of performance campaign based on USP or functional benefits example: Dove’s ¼ moisturizing cream or skin test or half face test.
4. Learn & Repeat:
The above three steps deployed correctly with automation CDP with help the system to learn and provide trends/media insights which will push the performance to the next level. It’s an ever-growing loop of learning and repeating with the right data insights, which causes the brand towards long-term success.
The above four steps provide an essential structure for Performance Branding, and many things can be layered further in the process to make it more robust and derive better MROI (Marketing ROI). Additionally, layering with attribution modelling helps in understanding the role of each channel and its usage.
