Do brand marketing ads need conversions?

The dispute between brand advertising and performance advertising has always existed. It is easy to talk about the integration of brand and performance, but there are many natural contradictions in the implementation process. If you only look at the data, it is easy to fall into the misunderstanding of the data's own logic, leading to generalization. This article writes about many aspects that I can think of on this topic, and discusses this topic from different angles. I hope everyone can gain something from it. ,

01

The dispute between brand advertising and performance advertising has always existed. In today's era of calling for the integration of brand and performance, there are some inherent contradictions between the two.

The emergence of brand advertising is due to product homogeneity. In a buyer's market, brands need to give products more spiritual connotations to create differentiation, and brand advertising is the main means to achieve this differentiation. For example, Coca-Cola and Pepsi .

Performance advertising is now more about online e-commerce conversions , but its originator may be offline retail promotional advertisements such as coupons, because users are naturally in a consumption scenario. For example, Baidu search ads and Taobao through train.

Overall: brand advertising is a way out of product homogeneity, and performance advertising is a means to promote scene consumption.

02

But today, both of these aspects are changing.

On the one hand, product homogeneity is shifting towards product verticalization , with more and more products beginning to target niche groups and break away from their original product categories. For example: In the past there was the category of potato chips, and in the future there may be a sub-category of potato chips specifically customized for programmers .

On the other hand, the switching costs between non-consumption scenarios and consumption scenarios are decreasing and the boundaries are blurring. For example, in the past, you had to go to an offline supermarket to buy something after watching a TV commercial, but now you can place an order using your mobile phone.

Another major background is that the media environment has undergone tremendous changes. The previous monopolistic and centralized media has disappeared, and the media is becoming increasingly fragmented and verticalized.

The above three changes have made brand advertising ineffective to a certain extent.

Product verticalization allows brands to naturally screen users through products, which is related to positioning; the low cost of switching consumption scenarios allows all advertisements to have the appeal of effect conversion, which is related to the decision-making chain; the fragmentation and verticalization of media allows brands to screen people through media, which is related to media efficiency.

The second change is due to technological progress, and the other two changes have externalized the brand image promotion function that was originally carried out by the brand's marketing department to products and channels . Looking at product packaging, sales channels, and media placements, the differentiation of brand image is naturally reflected.

Coupled with the shortened attention span of users , this is a disaster for brand advertising, which usually takes a certain amount of time to lay out.

03

Ideally, brand owners don’t need to run brand advertising at all, but this ideal state is like absolute zero, which can never be achieved.

The core reason is that the brand’s target audience cannot fully match the channel’s audience. Brand placement in general media will bring about the problem of homogeneity, so differentiated positioning is needed, but there is no media channel that can fully cover differentiated groups of people.

For example, Nike will never find a precise media whose audience is people who "agree with the just do it concept" and covers all such people. It can only approach this group through multi-dimensional analysis of user tags.

Channels and crowd labels cannot help brands with screening, so brands need to use brand advertising to achieve independent screening and attract potential target groups.

04

Brand advertising can bring brand premium, but brand premium ultimately comes down to differentiated pricing performance. But if you look deeper, you will find that there has been a certain reversal in the relationship between the strong roles of buyers and sellers.

In theory: users purchase goods to meet functional needs, and the buyer has the dominant power, for example, buying water is to quench thirst. But when the brand shows a certain degree of differentiation, users begin to pay more money to buy the psychological satisfaction brought by the differentiated positioning . At this level, the seller has the dominant power. For example, buying high-end water is not only to quench thirst, but also to show status.

The extra money that users pay in order to obtain psychological satisfaction is the brand premium. For example, the same Coca-Cola, one bottle is not labeled and no one except you knows it is Coca-Cola, and the other bottle is just ordinary Coca-Cola. The price difference between the two is the brand premium.

From a financial perspective: the brand assets generated by the brand premium are classified into the "goodwill" item on the balance sheet because this part of the value cannot be classified into any other item.

05

The problem with brand advertising is that it is a long-term force . Only by outputting the same values ​​over a long period of time can a brand slowly build up a premium.

Therefore, a major contradiction between brand advertising and performance advertising lies in how the brand balances short-term and long-term interests.

This relationship is somewhat similar to the struggle between the marketing department and the sales department in a traditional company. The marketing department is like brand advertising and is the cost center of the organization, while the sales department is like performance advertising and is the profit center.

Short-term interests and long-term interests are often contradictory and difficult to reconcile.

Just like a dieter seeing delicious food, satisfying your appetite can bring you great satisfaction at the moment, but resisting your appetite and maintaining a good figure can give you greater satisfaction in the long run. The issue of brand premium is similar to this, it's all about trade-offs.

06

It is obviously not in line with the scientific outlook on development to set brand advertising and performance advertising against each other. Balance is both a technology and an art.

The starting point of brand-effect integration is to better monitor the effectiveness of all advertisements, but the data is granular. From a large scale, all data are short-term data, so there are blind spots . This is the crux of most of the debate on this topic.

The necessity of brand advertising has been discussed above. So, from a technical point of view, the so-called brand and effect integration is nothing more than adding a QR code or search box prompt, right?

In terms of effectiveness, isn’t it just counting the conversion rate brought by brand advertising?

The problem is that consumer purchasing behavior is extremely complex , and there are many factors that promote purchases.

Brands have a cumulative effect . Looking at the conversion data of a certain time alone will limit our vision. It is difficult for you to clearly know what proportion of the behavior that promotes user conversion is the effect of this material, and what proportion is the superposition of other promotional behaviors. It is also difficult for you to know how much promotion you need to do to reach the user's critical psychological state for purchase.

07

Having said so much, as mentioned at the beginning, in practice, brand advertising is gradually becoming less important than before.

One reason not mentioned above is market logic.

Not only is the world's overall economy moving in a direction of refinement and verticalization, but the pace of change is also accelerating. The changes in recent decades may be greater than those in the previous thousands of years.

This acceleration is also reflected in business. Although new opportunities in the industry continue to emerge, the bonus period of these opportunities is getting shorter and shorter. As a market brand player, the key is to occupy a large enough market share as quickly as possible during the bonus period and establish a leading position. This is especially evident in the Internet industry.

Therefore, many companies in the limelight naturally focus on short-term market share and selectively ignore the long-term brand premium. They only start to optimize brand tone through brand building after establishing their leading position.

This short-term approach to benefit the long-term is a subconscious strategic choice for many companies.

There are both positive and negative examples. On the one hand, Pinduoduo, after gaining market share, began to crack down on three-no products and introduced branded merchants. On the other hand, Bluegogo’s branded products had a good reputation, but it eventually collapsed.

08

When it comes to brand advertising, many people think of various touching or stunning commercials. In the past, there was Kingston's "Memories Platform". In the past two years, the well-known one is Pechoin 's one-shot pictures and texts, and there are also various Durex Weibo posters.

But those that can be remembered by users are already the best among brand advertisements, and a large number of mediocre brand advertisements sink below the horizon.

The advantage of brand advertising is that it can generate widespread empathy through content, allowing the audience to spread it spontaneously, thus creating a hit. In contrast, unless performance advertising is designed in specific scenario channels and distribution and other operational mechanisms are in place, it is difficult for users to be motivated to spread it spontaneously.

Therefore, the advantage of brand content information is that it can be spread across screens, media, and time , and the key is the user's active sharing rate .

Although I have not conducted rigorous research and statistical analysis, it is obvious that adding conversion information to brand advertising will reduce the user's active dissemination rate.

The psychological principle is that the information that people actively spread is endorsed by their personality. People may actively forward a touching brand story, but it does not mean that they will endorse the brand product.

Therefore, people may forward a fun brand poster, but if the poster contains a QR code or sales information, people are less willing to forward it. This is also a delicate balance of interests between brand advertising and performance advertising.

Conclusion

It is easy to talk about brand-effect integration, but there are many natural contradictions in the implementation process. If you only look at the data, it is easy to fall into the misunderstanding of the data’s own logic and make a generalization.

This article writes about many aspects that I can think of on this topic, and discusses this topic from different angles. I hope everyone can gain something from it.

Source: Spread Gymnastics (ID:chuanboticao)