To most people, brand advertising and direct marketing are two wholly separate, if not antithetical, practices. One is for generating awareness and making emotional connections. The other is meant to elicit a specific response. But until recently, the two initiatives had never been thought of as working together at the same time.
On the Web, however, brand and direct marketing are not so easily separated. Granted, there are times when one tactic is more effective than the other, but in the big picture of an interactive marketing campaign, ROI efficiencies can only be achieved if brand and direct marketing are used conjointly. The secret lies in combining the perception-shaping power of brand advertising with the one-to-one persuasiveness of direct marketing.
It all starts with strong data mining
The most revolutionary aspect of Web marketing is perhaps its most as-yet-untapped one: the ability to measure consumer behavior and to deliver messages accordingly tailored to fit that behavior. The Web allows marketers to glean the type of information from consumers that makes more traditional marketers extremely jealous. By culling behavioral information during each phase of the consumer life cycle, we are able to target the right consumer with the right message at the right time, thereby securing response rates that far exceed campaigns in other mediums like print or television.
Think of consumer behavior patterns in terms of a ladder, each rung of which is made up of consumers at varying degrees of involvement with your brand. At the bottom rung is the general pool of consumers at large. Your customers are somewhere within this pool; your task is to dive in there and find them. On the second rung are the suspects-people who fall within certain demographics, psychographics or life-stages and therefore are likely targets for your offer. Suspects who have demonstrated a clear desire to learn more about your offering then become prospects. These are the hand-raisers, people who identify themselves by asking for more information. Prospects who have made a purchase become customers, and then the top rung of the ladder-the holy grail of marketing-consists of customers with whom you have developed such close relationships with that they become loyal brand advocates, a state in which your customers become advertisements themselves.
In this analogy, either brand- or direct-focused messages are more important depending on which rung consumers are standing. It is the combination of the two, however, that determines how far up the ladder they’ll ascend.
For instance, brand advertising is more effective at the bottom rung of the ladder, where it is essential to build awareness and establish perceptions. Direct response tactics must then take over during the suspect and prospect phases, in which the user needs to be given incentive to take action. Direct gives way to brand again in order to transition a user from a customer to loyal brand advocacy. But in all cases, elements of both brand and direct must be used in each message.
Using the combination appropriately will greatly improve your customer acquisition and retention rates and thereby maximize the return on your marketing investment.
Case Study: A Leading Online University
If all this theory seems a little, well, theoretical to you, let’s take a look at a real-world case study of a campaign in which brand building and direct response both played a vital role.
One of the nation’s fastest-growing online universities was looking to generate qualified leads that they could ultimately convert to enrolled students. The marketing team at the school had done their share of market research and data mining, and they understood what type of suspects they were targeting at the first and second rungs of the ladder, in which brand building was a chief concern. What they needed was some way of promoting their brand to this particular audience, while simultaneously utilizing direct response tactics to elicit the “hand raising” that would push suspects onto the next rung of the ladder, in which they become prospects.
To that end, our company developed a rich media ad unit for the university-a flash-based webmercial in which we laid out the benefits of earning a degree through the university and positioned the school as the most convenient, flexible and reputable way to earn a degree online. The creative featured smart-looking, well-dressed people in their twenties and thirties who represented the type of success a prospective student could achieve if they too attended this leading university.
These were the brand elements of the ad unit. They were intended to garner the attention of those users from within the pool of suspects who might make good prospects. But getting them to actually raise their hands and signify their interest as prospects would require something else.
And that’s where the direct response efforts came into play.
At the end of the message, as the voiceover winds down and encourages listeners with the call to action to “Apply today – and point your career upward,” a form appears, asking them to submit some basic information in order to be contacted by an enrollment advisor and begin the application process. Or, if they don’t want to sit through the whole message before completing the form, they can always click on the “Sign up now” button that appears on every screen throughout the piece.
So, was this webmercial designed as a brand building ad unit or a direct response piece? The answer, of course, is that it was both. It utilized brand-building elements to get a clear message across, and it capitalized on the momentum of that message by incorporating direct response techniques. By combining these two efforts into one campaign, it delivers the brand’s core competencies and creates a favorable direct response environment.
How has the campaign performed? The early returns indicate that it is performing extremely well. The ad unit was run on a cost-per-lead basis, and so far it has generated over 5,000 leads by itself in a little less than three months.
Most importantly, the leads it has generated have been of extremely high quality, converting to all their most significant benchmarks at a higher rate than any of the other leads we’ve generated. Perhaps the ultimate judge of a lead’s quality is the eventual cost-per-enrollment that the university pays on a batch of leads, and in this regard the numbers look very positive for our brand-direct campaign: it is saving them nearly $1,000 per enrollment over other forms of web-based lead generation campaigns.
Accounting for Brand Advertising
Brand-direct marketing requires a careful collaboration between these two formerly isolated practices. No longer is it an “either/or” situation. Instead, direct marketing allows us to strengthen the brand, to go deeper into it. Direct marketing essentially puts the customer in control of the relationship, and in so doing it allows the marketer to substantiate the brand image.
Traditional marketers won’t hesitate to place a measurable ROI on direct marketing campaigns, but they would never dream of placing such “restrictions” on brand advertising campaigns. In fact, traditional advertising agencies quickly eschew the idea of measuring ROI within an ad campaign, claiming their efforts have an effect that is beyond measurement.
Yet the concept of brand-direct marketing is plainly measurable not only in the number of new customers it brings in, but in the retention and advocacy of loyal customers as well. Perhaps this is why so many traditional advertisers have been reluctant to move online: because Web advertising, with its ability to combine brand and direct into the same message, makes brand advertising more accountable.
If brand-focused messages can help convert new customers into loyal advocates, isn’t that measurable? And if branding can combine with direct marketing mechanisms to transition users from consumers at large to suspects and subsequently prospects, shouldn’t it be held accountable as such?
If you’re an advertising executive unaccustomed to measuring results, you’re answer is “no.” But if you’re an in-house marketing executive looking for intelligent ways to improve your marketing efficiencies, the answer is a resounding “yes.”
Paul Epstein is the CEO of High Voltage Interactive, an online marketing solutions company specializing in lead generation and customer acquisition services. Paul may be contacted at paul@highvoltageinteractive.com.
