Why Brand Matters

Show Notes

Today’s episode is all about discovering the impact of brand on your organization’s bottom line. While many companies want to focus their investment on Do-state marketing, it’s actually less expensive to invest in brand and build affinity earlier in the customer journey.

What Do We Mean By Brand? (3:45 – 5:34)

• Brand: the level of awareness and emotion toward an organization; also, how your audience perceives your organization
• A strong brand is comprised of three things:
  • The target audience is aware of the brand
  • The target audience has a strong emotional feeling toward that brand
  • The target audience thinks and feels consistently about the brand
• Resources:
  • Podcast Episode 2: Defining Your Brand
  • Podcast Episode 11: Using Brand Vectors To Measure & Align Your Brand
  • Podcast Episode 12: Bringing Your Brand To Life

Benefits of Having a Strong Brand (5:35 – 13:15)

• Humans make decisions based on emotions
• A strong brand can short-circuit decision making and keep an organization from competing on price alone
• Brand investment means investing in a relationship with an audience not yet ready to buy
• Being along for the customer journey positions your brand as a known entity that is sought after at the point of sale
• This plays on the law of reciprocity in Robert Cialdini’s book “Influence”
• Close rates, cart abandonment, time-to-close are all metrics that reflect the influence of brand

Charity Break – Red Rover – (13:16 – 14:19)

Brand Investment is Less Expensive In The Long Run (14:20 – 17:39)

• Investing in brand is less expensive than investing in Do-state tactics
• The cost of reaching a Do-state audience is expensive because everyone else is bidding on that same audience
• Investing in an audience’s interest builds affinity earlier in the customer journey
• When we do not compete on point-of-intent, we can buy our audience at a lower rate

Investing in Brand Limits Downside Risk (17:40 – 21:31)

• Brand is like an insurance policy for when there is an over-reliance on a Do-state tactic
  • Ex: A company’s margins covered their AdWords costs until Google changed its search algorithm and its deluge of traffic turned into a trickle.
• If you build up a strong brand, your audience will seek you out by name when they are ready to buy, even if an algorithm changes or SEO breaks
• Ask yourself: is your brand strong enough to withstand a new competitor coming to market, or an algorithm change?

How To Incorporate More Brand Into Marketing Efforts (21:33 – 25:35)

• Personas and segmentation – focus your brand investment on a targeted audience segment rather than trying to target everybody, or “boil the ocean.”
• Customer journey – understand your audience’s motivations to build awareness beyond your brand’s features and benefits
• Brand definition – develop a personality for your audience to fall in love with, or the emotion you want to create in your audience.

Summary (25:36 – 27:53)

We hope you want to join us on our journey. Find us on IterativeMarketing.net, the hub for the methodology and community. Email us at [email protected], follow us on twitter at @iter8ive or join The Iterative Marketing Community LinkedIn group.

The Iterative Marketing Podcast is a production of Brilliant Metrics, a consultancy helping brands and agencies rid the world of marketing waste.

Producer: Heather Ohlman
Transcription: Emily Bechtel
Music: SeaStock Audio

Onward and upward!