Jones On Advertising

Search Engine Optimization for the Brain

2009-08-19T16:40:00.000-07:00

Search engine optimization (SEO) companies specialize in getting a brand’s website found on Google and other online search engines. But what is your company doing about optimizing your brand for the mental search engine?

We learn from a Google search that the most relevant answers to consumer inquiries rise to the top (or at least that’s the idea). This concept of relevancy applies to offline marketing strategies as well. But without a computer, the brand needs to be found first in the consumer’s mind rather than a computer screen.

When searching online and off, are consumers really looking for uniqueness? To optimize a brand for the brain, we must shift our thinking away from some traditional brand strategy approaches that focus on product uniqueness, and think more in terms of consumer relevancy. If we look at the leading brands in any category, we find that these products or services aren’t that unique at all. Instead, they are the most relevant to the most customers.

When optimizing for this mental search, traditional brand strategists must also think like an SEO company. To better understand this process, we can utilize how Google rewards web content relevancy, and work to build similar tactics offline. The more a website makes sense to the inquiry, the more likely it will be among the top results. The same is true in mental search. Think of buying a mattress, for example, and people in the Northwest think of Sleep Country USA first, because they can instantly recall the “Why buy a mattress anywhere else?” jingle.

We can also gain insight into consumer relevancy by observing how people search for a product online. What we learn can translate into the overall brand strategy. Typically, consumers start with a broad based search (mattresses) and then begin to refine (mattresses on sale in Seattle). We ask the questions: What are the most common search words they will use? How can we optimize our web site that will make it the most relevant for the most likely inquiries? What can we do to be in the top position or above the fold? What can we do to be found first?

Now we need to do the same thing with the brain. Substitute ‘website’ with ‘brand’, and instead of Google, imagine a customer with a need trying to recall a specific company. When a customer begins their mental search, we want their internal results to return your brand first.

Because human search engines don’t deliver results the same way a computer does, we need to better help consumers recall what will become their own top results. To ensure your brand becomes the first their brains return, we must clearly and unmistakably link your brand identity with their “search” parameters. In short, we need the brand and the need it fulfills to be very easy to remember. When this is achieved, the brand quickly becomes the most relevant in the mind.

When we think of the brand strategy process as search engine optimization for the brain, we can work towards creating the most relevant brand to the most people. The brand will be found first, even when there’s no computer around.

Responsibility Without Sacrifice

2009-08-19T16:16:00.000-07:00

It starts as the typical car commercial. Splash! A shiny silver sedan breaks through a cascading wall of water. Slow motion film of the car racing seductively across the wet pavement. Series of quick cuts to shots of the headlights, tail lights, and spinning wheels as the car rips down an empty highway. Extreme close up of water dripping down the silver letters that read... hydrogen 7.

Hydrogen what!?!

Cut to BMW logo. Tagline fades up under: Responsibility with Performance.

The tagline in one of BMW’s newest car commercials sums up what today’s marketers should know about “green” marketing in America: consumers like the idea of being environmentally responsible, but now if it actually means sacrificing something. We don’t want a hydrogen-powered car if it doesn’t go 0-60 in under seven seconds. We don’t want to give up our giant SUVs, but a hybrid engine would be nice. But it had better not be too expensive.

This is much different than what marketers faced during the energy crisis of the 1970s. Then, American consumers were asked to make major concessions in both their products and behaviors.

Marketers responded in kind with smaller, more fuel-efficient cars. Hondas and Toyotas began replacing Cadillacs and Buicks in American driveways.

But over the years our cars have gotten bigger than ever. The GLC has been replaced by the SUV. Our average fuel efficiency has gone from 28 mpg in the 1980s down to 24 mpg today. With an aging and more conservative U.S. population with a larger buying power than ever, we really don’t want to forgo our luxuries.

This doesn’t mean there’s not value in marketing environmentally responsible products. It is a huge and expanding market. But green is quickly becoming the cost of entry. It is now the marketers and not the consumers that are expected to make the concessions.

The responsibility without sacrifice mentality even enters our single most expensive purchase: our homes. In the 1970s, government actions were taken to create new energy codes that required home insulation, caulking and double pane windows.

But despite all the green-speak in today’s new-home market, consumers are reluctant to pay the price. In a recent series of focus groups my company conducted for the house-building industry, we tested a multitude of “green building” concepts with consumers. First-time homebuyers, and retiring “down-sizers” delved into the marketing appeal of five different home construction companies that offered various environmentally conscious building techniques. Happily, we learned that green building and energy saving concepts were all very appealing to consumers. We were right on target, we assumed. But there was one major caveat: “Green is great,” we learned, “as long as we don’t have to give up square-footage.”

In the short term, “building green” will fall somewhere behind the fourth bathroom in order of importance. And only a few lucky drivers will make the expensive green fashion statement with their hydrogen-powered BMWs. For now, it seems the bulk of today’s consumers will expect green to be a feature, not a concession. And as marketers, we must meet the challenge.

Double your media reach without doubling your budget.

2009-03-06T15:08:00.000-08:00

While online marketers preach the strength of web marketing, many advertisers find that limiting campaigns to a single medium to be too narrow. The leading products in virtually every category market across a variety of media. But traditional media like TV and radio are often criticized for their lack of direct analytics.

So when it comes to mass media, how do you gauge success? So many marketers understand how to measure effectiveness of a direct response campaign, but what helps ensure success in traditional media? How do we make sure our campaigns are as effective as their direct response counterparts? It's all in the numbers.

If you’ve worked in marketing long, you’ve probably sat through numerous media planning presentations. First you’re faced with spreadsheets and bar graphs that require an advanced statistics degree to decipher, followed by an alphabet soup of media speak. GRPs, TRPs, CPM, CPP, CPA, CPC, reach, frequency, showings, circulation numbers, and so on. I’ve sat through enough media presentations that I consider myself bilingual.

What many marketers may fail to consider is that most of these media figures assume that every ad has an equal impact, regardless of creative execution. So whether your company is spending ten thousand dollars or ten million dollars on media, perhaps the most important media figure to consider is one that is rarely discussed: effective frequency.

Effective frequency is a measure of how many times an ad must be seen or heard for it to register fully with the consumer — the lower the number the better.

It is a number that media planners have no control over, and creative departments tend to ignore. It is also one of the hardest numbers to gauge because in order to truly be accurate, it must take into account the actual effectiveness of the creative product, which is often learned too late.

An ad can be very creative, but if it takes too many impressions to understand, the actual reach and frequency of your media plan will be discounted and sales will suffer. To make sure an ad lives up to its media plan promise, we have learned that our creative executions have to get our point across quickly and motivate customers to act right away. Since mass media plans are typically based on gross impressions (reach multiplied by frequency), we know if we can cut the effective frequency of an ad in half, we can double our reach!

While some clients and advertising agencies have the luxury of focusing on only image or brand advertising, our clients have almost always judged the effectiveness of our television and radio campaigns based on an instant increase in sales or customer visits, often tracking the return on investment daily. Direct response campaigns limit their brand awareness. The more customers our ads can reach, the better our chances for success.

After twenty years of creating advertisements for retailers that demand immediately measurable results, I developed some general creative guidelines to help deliver advertising messages more quickly and effectively.

1. Make the message simple.

While complex or abstract ideas can make for great creative concepts, if the consumer doesn’t understand your message quickly, you have to show it to them more times. This has the same effect as cutting your media budget.

2. Make the creative engaging.

The first job of an ad is to make sure it is seen or heard. If your target audience is engaged in an ad they will be more likely to remember your message after the first impression.

3. Make the ad compelling.

Many creatives are so concerned about creativity or branding that they forget to sell. The goal isn’t just to entertain the consumer with your message, but to make the message relevant. Give the customer a reason to act, and act quickly. If your customers don’t act now, when will they?

4. Make sure the concept is inherently linked to the brand.

Too often people say “I saw this really funny ad, but I can’t remember what it was for.” Funny or not, the idea should be so directly tied to the brand that only one company could possibly come to mind.

5. Create mnemonic devices.

To help consumers recall your company or product more quickly, create a brand icon, jingle, animated logo or other memorable device. I can still remember the jingles from ads I heard thirty years ago. If a consumer instantly recognizes your music or spokesperson, it makes an immediate impression.

6. Consistency is as important as creativity

One of the biggest mistakes ad agencies and their clients make is changing campaigns too often. Advertising has a cumulative effect, so don’t create a series of unrelated ads or change strategies all the time. If a consumer knows the ad is for you right away, then you can concentrate your efforts on selling rather than building brand awareness.

Mark Jones spent 11 years as an art director, copywriter and associate creative director at Publicis before starting Jones Advertising in 2001. He has won numerous local and national awards for television and radio advertising, and has worked with some of the top retail brands in the world. He can be reached by visiting jonesadvertising.com.