}

Performance marketing won't build your brand

The Misconception of Ads Building Your Brand + Targeting the Wrong Audience

Last updated
November 25, 2024

The primary misconception is that simply showing ads will build your brand. This is not the case if your ads are reaching the wrong audience. It's easy to drive traffic through Google ads and mistake that for effective marketing. However, if the ads are irrelevant to the audience, it's a waste of resources. For example, advertising private helicopter hire to someone who hates flying is pointless. Similarly, spending money to attract consumer traffic for a B2B proposition is ineffective.

Underlying Reasons for Ineffective Advertising Approaches

1. **Inability to Identify the Right Audience in Market**

  For most businesses, it is challenging to pinpoint when the right audience is actively in the market for their product or service. This lack of precise timing leads to ads being shown to people who are not currently interested, diminishing the impact of the advertising efforts.

2. **Broad Customer Profiles**

  Many businesses have a broad ideal customer profile but lack the precision needed to target effectively. Without a well-defined and narrow target audience, ads are likely to reach people who may not be interested or ready to engage with the brand, leading to wasted ad spend and minimal returns.

3. **Misunderstanding Google Ads**

A significant number of businesses do not fully understand how Google ads work. This lack of understanding can result in poorly targeted campaigns, inefficient bidding strategies, and overall ineffective use of the advertising platform. To maximize the effectiveness of Google ads, businesses need to invest time in learning the intricacies of the platform or seek expertise to manage their campaigns.

Conclusion

In summary, while showing ads can be a component of building your brand, doing so without precise targeting is counterproductive. Businesses need to overcome the challenges of identifying the right audience, narrowing down their customer profiles, and understanding the mechanics of advertising platforms like Google ads to ensure their marketing efforts are effective and yield positive results, want to build your brand, do brand marketing.

Relationship between brand marketing and performance marketing

A comprehensive and insightful take on the relationship between brand marketing and performance marketing, highlighting the role of brand recall in driving measurable outcomes like improved CTRs and search traffic. Here’s a breakdown of the key points:

Key Takeaways

  1. Brand Marketing Amplifies Performance Marketing
    • Strong brand marketing reduces the cost of acquisition and enhances the effectiveness of performance campaigns.
    • It builds a reservoir of pre-existing brand memories, which then get triggered in high-intent performance channels like search.
  2. Examples of Brand Marketing Impacting Search
    • OOH Campaigns: Increased brand-aware organic traffic and CTRs for generic-category search terms.
    • Radio Campaigns: Similar outcomes in brand-aware search traffic and category-related search behavior.
    • Always-On Digital Campaigns: Consistent improvement in organic traffic and click-through rates, reinforcing the brand’s presence.
  3. Mechanisms of Recall
    • Unaided Recall: Direct search for the brand after encountering brand marketing (e.g., hearing the brand name in an ad).
    • Aided Recall: The memory of the brand is triggered when it appears in search results, leading to higher CTRs even in competitive, generic categories.
  4. Human Memory Drives Buying Decisions
    • People are naturally more likely to notice and select brands they recognize due to cognitive bias. This applies across B2B and B2C contexts, driven by fundamental principles of human memory.
  5. Retail Analogies Reinforce the Concept
    • In the cereal aisle, known brands like Cheerios dominate attention over obscure brands like Oaty-Os.
    • Brand Mimicry: Lesser-known competitors attempt to mimic established brands’ visual identities (color schemes, fonts, etc.) to piggyback on existing memory structures.
  6. Application to Digital Spaces
    • Google SERPs, social feeds, and other crowded digital environments work like supermarket aisles: brands with stronger recall are more likely to be selected.
    • In B2B, where mimicry isn’t as relevant, the focus shifts to how well brand recall and distinctiveness can trigger selection in a complex decision-making process.

Implications for Strategy

  • Invest in Long-Term Brand Building
    • Short-term performance metrics like ROI or ROAS from campaigns improve significantly when there’s sustained investment in brand marketing.
    • Consider allocating part of the marketing budget to brand-building activities like OOH, sponsorships, and always-on digital campaigns.
  • Enhance Distinctiveness
    • Stand out by reinforcing unique brand associations in visual identity and messaging. Distinctive brand elements make it easier to recall the brand, especially in competitive environments.
  • Measure the Brand-Performance Link
    • Track metrics like organic brand-aware traffic, CTRs for generic searches, and branded search volume post-campaigns. These can be key indicators of how brand marketing is feeding performance marketing.
  • Focus on Memory Triggers
    • Craft campaigns that embed strong, category-specific brand memories that act as retrieval cues in the buyer's journey.

Final Thought

Brand marketing isn’t a "soft" investment—it’s a critical enabler of performance marketing success. By creating strong memory structures in the minds of your audience, brands can significantly lower the cost of acquiring leads while driving higher engagement and selection at every stage of the funnel.

What gets remembered truly gets noticed, and what gets noticed gets selected!

Compelling narrative underscores the critical role of brand marketing in driving long-term business growth by shaping the mental availability of your brand among potential buyers. Let’s break down the insights:

Key Insights

1. Mental Lists Shape Buying Decisions

  • Each quarter, your ideal customer profile (ICP) will include individuals or organizations entering the market with pre-formed mental lists of potential vendors.
  • These mental lists, akin to shopping habits, are heavily influenced by brand perception and cognitive shortcuts rather than just merit or objective evaluation.

2. Perception is Reality

  • Buyers often default to the biggest, safest, and most familiar brands, which they perceive as less risky.
  • These perceptions may not always be fair but are driven by the natural human tendency to minimize effort in decision-making, especially when under time pressure.

3. The Long-Term Advantage of Being “Top of Mind”

  • Brands that consistently feature on day-one lists have a higher likelihood of winning deals compared to those left out.
  • While it's possible for unknown or smaller players to win (e.g., startups), they face an uphill battle, and scaling becomes increasingly difficult without established mindshare.

4. Real Market Share Follows Mindshare

  • Winning the market begins with dominating mental availability—becoming the brand people instinctively associate with specific needs, problems, or triggers.
  • Brands need to focus on two critical elements:
    • Mental Availability: Being recognized and considered in buying situations.
    • Category Entry Points (CEPs): Owning the associations tied to specific buying triggers or needs.

5. Gradual, Then Sudden Growth

  • Market share is the culmination of incremental investments in brand visibility and perception.
  • As Hemingway observed about bankruptcy, success in marketing often follows the same pattern: slow, steady growth in perception leads to a tipping point where the brand dominates its category.

6. Brand Marketing’s Dual Role

  • Increase Buying Triggers: Build associations that ensure your brand is recalled in more situations (Mental Availability).
  • Enhance Perception of Leadership: Use strategic branding and share of voice to position your brand as the most trusted, largest, and safest option in your space.

What this means for your Marketing Strategy

1. Invest in Building Mental Availability

  • Consistency is key. Your brand should show up repeatedly across touchpoints, aligning with relevant buying triggers.
  • Tailor your messaging to resonate with the pain points, aspirations, and decision-making cues of your ICP.

2. Own Category Entry Points (CEPs)

  • Identify the moments or triggers when buyers consider your product or service category.
  • Develop content, campaigns, and visibility strategies that firmly link your brand to these moments.

3. Boost Share of Voice (SOV)

  • A higher share of voice in your category correlates with greater share of market (SOM).
  • Outspend or outmaneuver competitors in key channels where your buyers are most active.

4. Balance Long-Term Brand Building with Short-Term Activation

  • Brand Building fuels future growth by creating lasting memory structures and positive associations.
  • Activation Campaigns drive immediate action and conversions.
  • Success lies in balancing both—investing in brand-building activities ensures performance campaigns deliver higher ROI over time.

5. Focus on Creating a Perception of Leadership

  • Position your brand as the industry standard or safest choice through credibility-building activities like thought leadership, testimonials, certifications, or partnerships.
  • Invest in high-quality visuals, compelling narratives, and professional branding to convey authority and scale.

The Bigger Picture

Marketing’s ultimate role is to reduce uncertainty for buyers. By leveraging brand marketing to increase your mental availability and owning key buying moments, you ensure that when buyers form their "day-one" lists, your brand is not just included but favored.

This isn't just about incremental wins—it’s about laying the groundwork for exponential growth over time, gradually building the foundation that drives your brand to the top of its category.

As the Hemingway quote perfectly encapsulates: growth happens “gradually, and then suddenly.”

Written on:
July 7, 2024
Reviewed by:
Prenitha Xavier

About Author

Prenitha Xavier

B2b Content Writer

Prenitha Xavier

B2b Content Writer

Writes extensively on topics related to B2B marketing, branding, web design, SaaS positioning, and more.

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