Innovations in advertising technology have been driving the digital marketing industry ever since the internet saw its first clickable banner ad in 1993. Nearly twenty-two years on, and many brands and marketing agencies are still discovering new opportunities to capitalise on the ever growing plethora of marketing channels available. This has given rise to a huge number of ad-tech companies looking to optimise marketing budgets by reducing the risk of investments and increasing customer reach.
However exciting and exhilarating this has been for the industry, these advancements may be creating a deficiency in an important marketing ingredient. The UK DMA’s Executive Director Chris Combemale touched upon this subject in a recent roundtable. Chris suggested that the marketing message is not getting the attention it deserves. It is hard to disagree with this when you give it some thought. With such a volatile landscape, it is easy to see a digital marketer getting caught up with big game changers in the mobile and social media channels, enchanted by the prospects of ‘Big Data’ and blown away by the simplicity of programmatic marketing technology. Chris is not alone in his thinking. With the UK DMA campaigning for Great British Copywriting, the entire organisation is tackling this issue head on.
Creating an effective marketing message is a good place to start but it must be broadcast consistently across the marketing and sales funnel.
This lack of cohesion is where messaging becomes defective.
To understand how this is happening we will look at an example based on a popular budget airline’s marketing strategy:
Stage 1. Attract Customers
a. Create a ubiquitous brand
b. Increase the chances consumers choose to fly with us
c. Deliver TV without increasing costs
Stage 2. Improve Conversion & Digital Reach
a. Emphasis on conversion
b. Personalise and target
c. Extend reach into new channels
Stage 3. Make the most of existing Customers & Prospects
a. Segmentation of user base
b. Communicate with relevance
c. Targeted upselling
In stages 1 (brand awareness) and 3 (customer retention), the objectives all lend themselves to emotional branding. This is where the brand attempts to attach itself to a consumer’s emotional state to create an emotional bond. Stage 2, however, requires an emotional sell, where the consumer makes a decision because of a change in their emotional state. Immediately, there is a messaging conflict of interest.
Interestingly, Stage 2 is where most of the technological innovations have taken place. The emphasis on conversions as a means to measure customer engagement and campaign success has only heightened the value of the emotional sell. This creates an insufficient emphasis on the importance of the real marketing message behind the campaigns. What this results in is a significant waste of resources in Stage 1, because the power of the brand hasn’t been effectively utilised. Moreover, you get a disjointed customer journey as they reach Stage 3, when the messaging reverts back to a brand bonding exercise.
Brands and Advertisers need to be aware of the real marketing message and incorporate these messages into their conversion and reach campaigns. Without a doubt, the overarching marketing message of the brand needs to be integrated into any conversion rate optimization (CRO) strategy. And only by approaching this issue using CRO techniques will you be able to identify the balance between emotional branding and the emotional sell.
By Gerry Weatherley, Head of Variant4 at Clickwork7.
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