Do you think of your business goals in terms of branding and direct response? Most advertisers do. In fact, I’ve worked with dozens of advertisers who had entirely separate teams, budgets, and KPIs for these two goals. I think it’s time we re-classified these objectives, because the truth is, there is only one goal for the average business, and that’s driving revenue.
Direct response simply means we want to drive sales now and branding means we want to drive sales eventually. The idea of building brand awareness and favorability or achieving optimal reach and frequency are simply viewed as necessary stepping stones before an ultimate purchase.
So why does it matter?
Why is it important to think of branding campaigns as long-term direct response campaigns?
It matters because too many advertisers settle for surface level attribution and measurement when they attach the word “branding” to a campaign. In the last decade, I’ve heard countless companies set goals like “10 million views” or “1 billion impressions.” Not that there is anything wrong with views and impressions, but chasing big, round, impressive vanity numbers like these leaves us ill-informed.
When we start defining branding as long-term direct response, we force ourselves to build attribution models that ladder up to our actual goals. Impressions, Clicks, Time on Site, Reach, and Frequency then become the first step in your attribution journey, not the last.
Here’s what I mean:
Let’s assume all impressions have some non-zero value, however tiny it may be, that helps contribute to an eventual sale. This value may be a fraction of a penny, but it undeniably exists. From that initial ad impression, we then therefor know there is a consumer journey to a sale. A journey with some unknown number of steps and some unknown amount of time. Tools like Adobe Analytics and Google Analytics can help you visualize these funnels, but let’s start even more simply.
Here is our journey:
Impression ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------> Sale
Now we fill in the blanks:
Impression -----------Clicks--------------Site Visits----—----Product Page Views----—-------> Sale
or:
Impression --------Awareness--------Consideration-------—---Store Visits----------—--------> Sale
Now We do some math and make some Estimates:
Most businesses can tell you their average purchase value, so let’s say it’s $100. Now we just need to answer 4 simple questions.
How many ad impressions does it take to drive a click and how many impressions does it take to make someone aware of your product? (100 is a nice round number.)
What percentage of ad clicks turn into site visitors and what percentage of people aware of your product would consider buying it? (For simplicity's sake, let’s say the answer to both is 75%.)
What percentage of site visitors end up viewing a product page, or of all the people considering your product, what percentage of them end up visiting a store? (Let’s estimate that the answer to both these question is 10%.)
What’s your conversion rate on Store Visitors or Product Page Viewers? (Let’s say 1%.)
And just like that, I can tell you that each impression, for whichever marketing platform I just analyzed, is worth $0.00075. Now we have an economic valuation model for our “branding” campaign. We can use automation tools to run our digital advertising campaigns around a CPM goal derived from this formula.
Some of the answers to these four questions can be found in your web analytics and digital advertising tools; others will be assumptions, which can make these types of strategies intimidating.
But your best guesses and most educated assumptions are far more valuable than you might think. Use all your available data points, but also trust yourself. You know your business and your customers. Build a model that places a “direct response” value on every piece of data received, even if those data points are “branding” metrics like impressions.