There is an assumption in marketing that demand equals brand awareness plus time; That people eventually fall to the top of the funnel under gravity. But that's not what happens in the all-important middle stage of Jupiter's journey. This is not how people see brands and advertising.
There is a huge gap between long-term brand marketing and short-term performance marketing that is often overlooked. We call this the "missing medium".
Most customer journeys do not pass through well-marked stops with the inevitable drop; Start with brand awareness before proceeding wholeheartedly to consider the rationale for the purchase and then move on to the buy button. It reflects how the human mind makes decisions, and it is far from a linear process. He notices, forgets, remembers, repeats, judges, feels familiar, feels calm. And then, when it was time to shop, he made an obvious choice without thinking about how it became an obvious choice.
What potential buyers don't know is that effective advertising or search advertising doesn't necessarily have a long-term impact on their brand experience. What they don't know is that video ads, which are for educational purposes only, are not designed to make them want to buy. They do not know that the informative guidance or the content of the case study is not intended to elicit an emotional response. Different focal points play different roles at the same time. all creative possibilities; All of them are capable of creating brand memories and brand associations. They all contribute to the final purchase decision.
Combine branding and business planning
If brand marketing is to be a reliable and affordable option for most marketing teams, it must be accountable in ways and on terms that C-suite executives understand and value. That doesn't mean it has to be a trigger for instant action, instant sales and ROI, but we need to get serious about finding ways to make it accountable in the short and long term.
A brand may do better in the long term, but it starts working immediately, takes its place among other customer touch points, affects short-term marketing impact, and creates data signals that we can interrogate to understand and plan this process.
Why it's time to incorporate goals into your marketing model
And this is just one component of the "missing medium" that marketers post and publish themselves. Millennials, who now hold positions of purchasing power, Generation Z, will dominate the consumer category in the next few years; None of this group makes purchase decisions based solely on subconscious memories generated by brand advertising. They make decisions based on the interaction of these memories with what they consciously know about the brand.
If we want to master the middle of the funnel, we can't rely on investing at the top and bottom and just hope it all comes together. We need to plan activities for the funnel center and indicators, combine different types of experiences (related to brands, requirements and goals) and carefully analyze how they are combined to create activities.
Mapping the "Lost Center".
The digital transformation of marketing that has accelerated in the last 18 months gives us more opportunities than ever to find the "missing middle". We can use search distribution as a real-time indicator of awareness and mental reach by analyzing search trends to understand the priorities of our audience and the context in which the middle of the buyer's journey takes place.
We can capture and categorize intent signals by analyzing how they have been affected by past interactions with the brand, and how they will affect future interactions with the brand. We can compare the time periods when we expect all of this to happen and begin to answer the persistent question of how and when different types of marketing activities generate a return on investment (ROI).
Using marketing data, digital research, artificial intelligence and analytics, marketers will be able to build detailed models of how a brand's advertising impact interacts with other touchpoints, and the frequency and duration of brand engagement needed to achieve that impact .
We can track how a brand's touch and demand points contribute to the overall customer experience. A brand can do everything in the long run, but all advocates of brand marketing understand that it also has short-term effects. Half of the marketing funnel has been covered for too long.
Now is the time to look at the nature of this effect and use it to create meaningful metrics that provide insight into how the long-term picture is evolving.
Nick Sekull is director of sales at Microsoft Advertising
