The obsession about the click killed the brand



Last week I went to a very interesting event about data fueled marketing. Amongst the many speakers in that event, there was quite a lot of diverse points of view. I must clarify that this event is for marketing geeks and I confess to be one too, but overall I also left the day with a funny feeling and a thought in my mind.

The world of marketing and advertising went from being completely non measurable a couple of decades ago (or very little measurement like top of mind and brand awareness surveys), to living in the digital world were every interaction can be tracked and measurement is a lot more comprehensive. Nevertheless, in this whole obsession to measuring every click, many of us marketers forgot about the medium and long term impact of what we do.

Customer acquisition through digital campaigns is fine for short term sales cycles like consumer products, but even then, you are very much focused on selling a product and that's it!

The whole objective of building brands was to be able to create a long term relationship with the consumers. A banner ad and a landing page won't do that. It may satisfy your interest on clicks, CTR and short term sales, but it would definitely not build a relationship with the consumer.

The challenge now is to educate and convince the leadership in companies to not only look at the short picture: clicks, conversions and sales... but to understand that there is a longer term objective of achieving differentiation through the brand, and this needs to be invested in and seen as a long term goal. Clicks and conversions won't necessarily do!

And this is even more important when we talk about products and services with a longer sales cycles, where the consideration phase is a lot longer and the decision making process more complex. They have to focus more on building that digital brand as there will likely be other influencers and decision makers in the process which will not click on your ad.

This is why content marketing has become such a big threat to advertising. Whilst digital advertising has focused on the click, content marketing has focused on developing engagement with different stakeholders, creating a long term relationship based on value exchange and trust.

Let me know your thoughts about this...

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