How to measure brand ROI in a world of imperfect data
When talking about marketing efforts and plans, it can be quite difficult to find an explanation for why it is difficult to measure the direct impacts of brand messages on bottom-line conversions .
It can be equally difficult to explain why, if it is so difficult to directly attribute conversions to any brand-building effort, we should focus on it.
“Sure, I understand that we need to build our brand or thought leadership through an organic presence on social media. But how do we measure the effect of that on our sales?
What Most People Get Wrong About Branding and Digital Marketing/Growth Hacking
Constantly building, charging and refining a brand
The golden ratio
How brand building impacts activation and conversions
How to approach brand ROI in an imperfect world
Measuring brand ROI
Digital metrics as an indicator of brand ROI
Are you looking for ways to improve and strengthen your brand?
What Most People Get Wrong About Branding and Digital Marketing/Growth Hacking
What Most People Get Wrong About Branding, Digital Marketing and Growth Hacking
For many people in the digital marketing and growth hacking world, brand building seems like a nice-to-have, while marketing activities based on direct and attributable activation seem like a must-have.
This is precisely because brand building works in relatively mysterious armenia business email list ways as it is inherently difficult to prove return on investment (ROI) beyond a doubt.
Brand building and activation work across different timescales.
The point is that brand building and short-term growth activities like acquisition and activation, which are often a big part of what growth hackers or digital marketers focus on, help you achieve the same thing, just on different timescales:
Brand building and sales work across different timescales.
Binet and Fields’ research shows how brand building and sales activation actually work together—in the best case, synergistically—to increase sales in the short and long term.
Constantly building, charging and refining a brand
Building a brand is about much more than just the look and feel or outdated guidelines on how it should always look at all costs . It's about the core idea or mission, or even the purpose of a company .
And it's about validating and refining that core idea from step number one: really creating the brand story and all the expressions of the brand identity.
All the way to constantly refining and validating in the market how the product or service works, looks, feels and how the product is promoted through how the content looks and sounds, by using the brand as a guide and, conversely, adapting and evolving the brand strategically.
And if you do it right, building a brand can deliver immense value – in terms of employee engagement, customer satisfaction and financial growth – over the long term.
If you build your brand this way and communicate it consistently across the 4 brand vectors (Wally Olins; product, environment, communication, behavior ) and especially in your messaging in the places where your target audience lives, it will help you increase conversion rates at every step of the customer journey.
Don't forget to attach short-term activation strategies to your branding activities .
And vice versa: don't forget to attach a long-term brand strategy to your short-term Growth Hacking or Digital Marketing activities and campaigns, whether they are activation-oriented or not.
The golden ratio
Well, then, if all that is true and I am supposed to divert some of my resources to activation and others to brand strategies and activities, what is the ratio I should strive for? Based on their research, Binet & Fields recommends a golden ratio of 60/40 investment in brand messaging and not activation to achieve synergy and sustainable growth.
The golden ratio of brand messaging versus activation
The idea is that as short-term activation increases short-term sales growth and brand building creates long-term growth, the maximum results are found in some combination of both. The exact and most appropriate ratio will vary depending on the exact context, and there seem to be some standards for specific verticals, for example – read on to learn more about this.
