It’s not brand OR performance marketing.
It’s brand AND performance marketing.
Only question is the balance between the two.
You see the efficiency in direct URL type in. You see the efficiency in organic search. All of those pop as traffic sources and sales sources when we have the investment in upper funnel.
I’m not worried about us performance marketing the brand to death because we are properly activating the campaigns at every layer of the consumer’s journey, the upper funnel, the mid, consideration, and then the lower funnel, and they all work together well.
You have to be authentic to who you are as a brand, otherwise you’re not going to win, and you’re not going to get new customers or keep your customers if you’re selling them something that you’re actually not.
That authenticity also maybe even starts with the product and making sure that your product is on brand.
Your brand is a story, an expectation, and a promise.
Staying true is hard, but chasing trends usually isn’t a formula for long-term success.
Let the trade war begin
The White House announced" a 10% tariff “on all imports from all trading partners”, plus additional tariffs for 57 countries, including:
- Vietnam: 46%
- China: 34%
- Taiwan + Switzerland: 32%
- India: 27%
- South Korea: 26%
- Japan: 24%
- Germany + Italy: 20% (via EU)
Creative analysis and optimization is top of mind for me right now, so I really like this flowchart from DTC Daily
More than half (54%) of American consumers say they don’t pay attention to the brands they buy, as long as the product meets their needs
57% of American consumers have switched to own-label brands because they are more affordable and 55% think the quality of own-label products is comparable to branded products.
Branding is more than just slapping a logo on the package and calling it a day.
People don’t care about your brand unless you give them a reason to.
Be different. Be better.
via MarTech
If you’re always thinking about your audience and how they’re going to feel when they experience the thing that you’re making, then it becomes a bit more achievable.
James Acaster’s answer when asked if making something that’s both hugely accessible and innovative at the same time is something that can be designed for.
When talking about the song Hey Ya, naturally.
If you’re someone…who’s like “this has to be true to me and what I want to do” but also it can’t just be just for me and nobody else. I think if those are your priorities, then you can kind of accidentally on purpose do that more often than not.
Audience obsession is rarely the wrong choice. (Unless you lose yourself on the way.)
Shane Parrish shares the root of good marketing and brand building (though I think he was just talking about behavior change)
If you want to understand someone, figure out the narrative they tell themselves about themself.
If you want to change your behavior, change your narrative. If you want to change someone else’s behavior, offer them a more compelling narrative they can tell themselves.
Where the Venn diagram overlaps is where the magic happens.
An HBR article shares the findings of an ecommerce pricing study undertaken using A/B testing.
One finding:
Among the 54% price tests with a non-control winner, we found that 59% of winning price points were lower than the control price. This means that e-commerce retailers commonly overprice their products and, thus, leave some profitable demand uncaptured.
To which shoppers responded
Availability trumps loyalty.
From David Gottlieb on the Behind the Numbers podcast:
In our specific primary research, we find that 40% of shoppers will brand switch when they can’t find the item they’re looking for.
But if you’re buying a consumer good like a soup or a mac and cheese or a home cleaning product, people are brand loyal to a point, but if they need something for a recipe or to complete their shopping mission, they’re probably not going to go home empty-handed.
That’s a real challenge for brands because brand loyalty is built slowly over time and it can erode very quickly if somebody is forced to try a competitive product, you’re giving them an opportunity that you don’t want them to have essentially as a loyal brand shopper.