Online advertising is perfect for direct response. A customer sees an ad for something that interests them and they can immediately take action. What about brand though? Can online seriously be used for a brand campaign? It absolutely can, but New Zealand isn’t doing it well. There are a few things marketers and advertisers (me included) need to get their heads around.
Firstly, it’s not cheap. It might be more cost effective than other media, but it’s not cheap. The fallacy that online advertising is cheap needs to be thrown away. To do a brand campaign online some serious investment in both media spend and creative is needed
You need to make sure the media mix is right. A brand campaign is going to utilise display. If you’ve done a half decent job, the advertising is going to drive people to search for more information, so you’re also going to need a SEM presence. You’ll also get people discussing the brand on social media, so you’ll need a presence there.
It’s a brand campaign, so where your advertising appears is crucial. Context is king. Stay away from performance networks; it might seem like a great idea to sneak a brand ad onto a performance network to get a truckload of cheap impressions, but you then have absolutely no control of where your ad shows up. You could end up on some crackpot’s blog that has adsense installed (unlike this crackpot who doesn’t). Your brand needs to be positioned on sites that have brand values similar to your own – or that you want yours to aquire. Pick your placements very carefully. Make sure you’re looking at the right metrics when buying. If you’re buying on CPM, not all impressions are created equal. Check average page duration, average session time and pages per visit.
This will sound like a no brainer, but you need to make good ads. A brand campaign needs excellent, engaging, innovative and stand out creative. You’re not doing a cheap and dirty direct response campaign or even a good looking, effective direct response campaign. This is a brand campaign and the ads need to portray your brand and what it stands for. Creating great online brand ads isn’t cheap. Invest some serious money and get something that’s sexy and engaging. Make an emotional connection.
Make sure your online brand campaign ties in with the rest of your campaign. Your online campaign should be an integral part of the overall campaign, not a tack on at the end. Bring digital in at the beginning, when everything else is being developed.
Measure the right thing. Don’t judge the effectiveness of a brand campaign on the number of clicks or the number of impressions received. Use tangible measures like increase in sales and intangible measures such as brand metrics like prompted and unprompted. Online advertising also has the added bonus of engagement metrics. Measure how many people interacted with your ad and how long they did it for. Don’t fucking measure clicks.
Online is just another media. The basics of branding are the same as anywhere else. If it seems difficult, scary, or just unknown then just think of the immortal words of Vanilla Ice: “Stop, collaborate and listen”.
