To effectively achieve market visibility, it is important to differentiate between leading indicators and lagging proof. Most marketing teams run their campaigns without taking into consideration actual customer engagement, and they measure success using vanity metrics such as traffic numbers. Many marketers rely upon weak signals to validate budgets based upon hope.
True market presence is more than collecting random impressions; it's about effectively planting a particular idea in the mind of a potential buyer, then measuring whether or not that idea remains in their mind.
By effectively separating leading signals from lagging proof, marketing teams can create systems to track the effectiveness of the strategies they implement.
The majority of marketing teams make the mistake of assuming that they are changing the minds of potential customers when they reach them. The data demonstrates that this assumption can be perilous, with only 20% of potential buyers retaining memory of an advertisement for the day after they viewed it. Memory fades rapidly and algorithms provide rewards based upon most recent activity as opposed to historical success.
The Difference Between Recognition and Recall
Within the context of recognition versus recall, recognition provides a very low standard of achievement for marketers. When a buyer sees your brand logo on the store shelf or computer screen, they are able to recognize the brand name. Aided recall surveys may be used to determine the level of recognition by providing a list of names and asking respondents to select those names they remember.
Unaided recall is much more complex to achieve. It involves being able to say the name of the brand when thinking about a particular item. To reach unaided recall, marketers must saturate their target markets' minds with the message over time. No one can achieve unaided recall within a one-week period simply by purchasing the name.
How Much to Spend on Online Advertising
In order to achieve a level of market saturation that will provide market dominance, marketers must not spread their budgets too thin. If you provide educational material, it enables an increase in brand trust by 9% within a week; however, repeated exposure is necessary to retain that trust.
A new study from the UK has shown that the effectiveness of linear television advertising has decreased by 4.4%, indicating that the traditional mass media model is becoming less effective. Therefore, the current model for obtaining visibility in today’s world is to provide your message repeatedly through targeted digital channels. If you stop paying for ads, your score (presence) will drop.
Where to Run Your Ads
Choosing the right channel to advertise on is not about being creative; it is primarily a mathematical exercise. It is essential to know where your target audience spends their time and how to reach them repeatedly.
The average user spends over 2 hours and 20 minutes on social media each day. However, they are not interested in hearing directly from companies. According to studies, 69% of consumers trust information provided through influencers compared to information provided through company accounts.
Schick Intuition ran an integrated campaign utilizing both influencer marketing and paid advertisements, resulting in a 229% increase in ad recall and a 113% increase in purchase intent. Another influencer campaign resulted in a 495% increase in social media followers; 320% increase in website traffic. Purchasing trust through a recognized third-party source will create trust faster than building it from scratch.
How Search Engines Are Changing
Intent is determined primarily by search volume; however, the method by which users search for information is changing. The method now used is called Generative Engine Optimization.
AI search engines summarize their answers prior to having users click on a hyperlink. It is critical to be recognized in AI-generated summaries as an authority. This refers to the importance of providing clearly documented and factual-based structured data so that language models can effectively parse and reproduce those resources with ease. Those companies not listed in an AI-generated summary are typically not visible to the increasing number of prospective buyers that rely on AI-generated recommendations.
How Your Budget Changes Your Choices
When we think about large budgets, large audiences usually follows. When we think about limited budgets, limited frequency must follow. When attempting to reach mass audiences via a limited budget, there are not enough exposures of your message to create an impact.
According to an estimated 87% of B2B marketing executives, producing captivating, targeted niche content increases their presence in the marketplace by drawing in more potential customers. Before attempting to increase your volume of business in a broad category, concentrate on dominating a niche.
How to Measure Brand Awareness Strategy Success
The general rule is: "You can't manage what you don't measure"; however, measuring does require selecting the correct measures in the required order. Never mistake a leading digital signal for commercial proof.
Setting Your Starting Point
Before committing any funds towards your marketing strategy, you need to have a set of baseline metrics established. For example, you want to determine your current market share of voice and baseline recall rate, etc. Without this information, there is no way to know if your campaign made a difference.
The use of tools, such as Brand24, allow marketers to visualize their starting line by providing users with a 0-100 branding presence score. Qualtrics and SurveyMonkey also allow marketers to conduct easy baseline surveys. Track these baseline metric scores for at least 90 days after launching any major initiative.
Two Types of Evidence
A complete measurement framework will include short and long-term indicators. For example, you will use both short-term indicators (immediate) to assess whether your campaign is working through data aggregation immediately; as well as long-term indicators (lagging) which will allow you to monitor subsequent behaviour after you have implemented your campaign over an extended period.
Inflowave has developed a three-step process for building your measurement framework, which includes: - Five key leading indicators (for reference);
- Three key lagging indicators.
Five leading indicators:
1. Branded Search Volume
This shows you how many people are visiting your site using Google.
2. Social Share of Voice
The percentage of social media mentions made for your business in relation to your competitors (social).
3. Direct Website Traffic
Visitors who enter your URL directly into their browser (direct traffic).
Three lagging indicators:
4. Unaided Recall Surveys
The percentage of respondents who mention your business when asked "What is the first company you think of?"
While tracking metrics on a regular basis (leading) is important to forecast success, it can give a false sense of security if they do not translate into actual memory formation. Therefore, it is critical that you conduct a brand lift survey semi-annually to confirm that your initial leading signals have created actual memory for your brand awareness strategy.
Easy Ways to Track Your Ads
You can run an effective survey tracking program without spending a fortune. Example: One fast-casual restaurant chain increased its unaided brand recognition from 30% to 45% by conducting a very simple monthly survey through Zigpoll. By collecting these monthly survey responses, they were able to make more informed, strategic advertising decisions.
If you are a larger brand, tools like SmartyAds DSP and ChartExpo are available to show you the reach and frequency of your campaigns across numerous media platforms. You can use social media to identify customers engaging with your brand, and combined with your CRM data, determine if these customers are your ideal target customers.
How to Fix Failing Online Ad Campaigns
Usually a major reason why many visibility-based campaigns failed was due to the fact that a large amount of time elapses between initially looking at performance metrics and making tactical changes to their media mix.
Teams should be adjusting their media during the campaign's duration to take advantage of what is working properly!
Finding Where Ads Fail
When the campaign had high reach and very little growth in branded search; this is indicative of failing messages, and/or lack of targeting and creative inspiration to capture consumer interest. You should immediately eliminate the spend on any channel providing low levels of growth/engagement and utilize your budget to focus resources where performance is most successful.
Doing More of What Works
You need to invest additional funds and resources into any channel in which you are experiencing spikes in early indicators. The Share a Coke campaign is likely one of the most highly successful examples of scaling a working campaign concept. In addition to running successfully in over 70 countries, the Share a Coke was awarded 7 Cannes Lions awards due in great part to the significant amount of social sharing occurring at the start of the campaign.
Not all companies can be Coca-Cola, but the logic for all is similar. Identify the signal, prove it, and scale the signal for as long as it has recordable proof. The iHeartDogs campaign is another example of this; the campaign provided over 200,000 meals, and generated approximately 4 times the predicted number of sales by doubling down on a message that resonated with consumers.
How to Know If People Remember You
Establishing visibility is both science and art; you are paying for a piece of the shared memory of humanity. In general, confounding levels of untracked/randomized spending generally yield little to no return; a stake should be in place when establishing the visual tracking and evaluation metrics, including selecting channels to reach consumers based on verified consumer trust, and making sure to separate lagging indicators from lead/conversational metrics.
The teams that are successful with their marketing strategy do not just run advertisements; they define their position through branded visibility tools like Qualtrics and Brand24. They validate their assumptions via bi-annual branded brand study and constantly modify their frequency caps to maximize consumer engagement.
If your technology-based advertising does not separate your paid impressions from increases in branded search volume, your advertising budget is simply going to be an expense for charitable donations to television networks, without measurable results. Having a strategic visibility campaign requires discipline, continual testing, and total disregard for the vainglorious advertising metrics.