HOW EFFECTIVELY HAS DIGITAL MEDIA BEEN INTEGRATED INTO THE BIG PICTURE OF YOUR BRAND MARKETING? Many marketers have implemented digital tactics in a piecemeal fashion: partly with their regular ad agency, other parts perhaps in-house, and some—such as pay-per-click— with a third-party “specialist”. The problem is that there may be serious disconnects between each of these activities, reducing their combined effectiveness. That means they are not helping your brand shine as well as they could. To keep the spotlight on your brand, all aspects of your marketing plan should be coordinated to allow for sharing of valuable information. Only that way can you ensure that “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”

In the following pages we will explain each of the 7 disconnects, why it’s a problem for marketers, and what you can do to fix it.

BLADE CREATIVE BRANDING 2bladebranding.com

WHAT IT IS Many marketers allow the search function to be siloed off from their core branding activities, and handled by a “specialist” practitioner who only does search. According to this logic, pay-per-click (PPC) search marketing is considered a tool for generating clicks and conversions, not really a branding exercise.

DISCONNECT #1:

THE SEARCH SILO

HOW TO FIX IT Simply put, your search marketing needs to be intimately connected with all of your other marketing activities. You can do this in two ways.

If your search campaigns are handled by a separate team, make sure they are formally sharing information with your brand marketing team. They should provide at least the five essential reports listed here, on a monthly basis.

From these reports, you can learn a lot about trends and changing interests in your brand community, and how your brand is being represented in search. (This presumes you have a branding agency savvy enough in digital to know how to use the data.)

The other way is to have your branding agency handle your paid search campaigns as well. The caveat is that you need an agency with the experience and capabilities to run sophisticated search campaigns. A rule of thumb is that they should have at least one full time dedicated Digital Ad Manager, and at least two staff members with Google AdWords certification (the minimum requirement for Google Partner agency status).

WHY IT’S A PROBLEM This disconnect fails to recognize the impact search has on branding. In fact, the way your brand is seen—or not seen—on Search Results Pages can make a big difference in brand awareness, competitive position, and perceived brand value.

Furthermore, a lot of valuable data is routinely gathered in the process of optimizing PPC search campaigns—which can yield great benefits if it is available to other digital marketing activities. However, if it is kept in the dark recesses of the Search Silo, and is not shared with your brand marketing team, you could be losing out—big time.

BLADE CREATIVE BRANDING 3bladebranding.com

WHAT IS A BRAND?

The clearest and simplest way to understand how your brand connects with people is to see it as a community.

At Blade, we see brands as destinations to which consumers are drawn by virtue of the shared values they hold in common—thus forming a community that is populated by your customers and market influencers.

So when we talk about the branding data that can be garnered from search, what we are really talking about is learning more about what’s happening inside your brand community. Taking the perspective that brand building is about building a relationship with your community makes it obvious that learning more about that community is important.

To learn about our brand community perspective, and how it helps you stay focused on the health of your brand, see this article in PROFITguide.com.

5 ESSENTIAL PPC REPORTS THAT MUST BE SHARED MONTHLY

Here’s a partial list of the data available from paid search campaigns that can help to enhance the efficiency of your other marketing activities:

• Top 100 Search Terms• Top Keywords by impressions• Top Text Ads by CTR• Day-of-Week Report• Device Segmentation Report

4

WHAT DOES “INTEGRATED” MEAN?

Not so long ago, print, radio and TV were the reigning triad of advertising. Then along came digital—and many agencies, including many big ones, weren’t ready for it. Some of the big agencies bought out smaller groups that specialized in one or more forms of digital. This allowed them to incorporate the reach and measurability of digital into their media planning—and thereby call themselves “integrated.”

When done right, integrated media planning was a real benefit to their clients; and it remains true today that strategically combining traditional and digital media can provide greater efficiency and higher ROI to your marketing program.

HOW TO FIX IT

Digital is essential; but it must be integrated into your marketing mix using a holistic ecosystem approach. The ecosystem leverages brand content that your customers will access, engage with and share, via both online and traditional platforms, to create a growing community of loyal customers.

WHY IT’S A PROBLEM

The consequence of dis-integrated planning is that your brilliant digital tactics may not succeed as well as they could if they were reinforced by the powerful artillery that traditional media can often provide. You risk having a plan that’s inefficient and presents a fragmented image of your brand.

This is a huge hazard if you’re transitioning to a greater emphasis on digital in your ad plans. You don’t want to lose sight of the bigger picture in the process.

WHAT IT IS

“Integrated” is one of those buzzwords that have lost meaning through overuse. Agencies that are exclusively digital will gleefully call themselves “integrated” if they offer, for instance, search marketing together with website design services. In fact, if your agency doesn’t have experience and skills in both traditional and online media, your ad planning is bound to be “dis-integrated.”

DISCONNECT #2:

DIS-INTEGRATED MEDIA PLANNING

BLADE CREATIVE BRANDING 5bladebranding.com

COORDINATED ECOSYSTEMS SUSTAIN BRAND COMMUNITIES In the brand ecosystem model, command of both online and traditional media is essential, because it impacts every one of the four activity spheres. Measurable data from each media stream is used to Review and Optimize the creative Content, which is then Redeployed to appropriately selected Media.

BLADE CREATIVE BRANDING 6bladebranding.com

WHAT IT IS Real Time Bidding (RTB) is a way of buying ad impressions that targets specific users, according to their interests and online actions. It’s called “Real Time” because it literally happens at lightning-quick speed, as the content is loading on the user’s device.

Because of its advanced targeting capabilities, RTB has emerged as one of the most cost-effective forms of digital advertising.

The systems involved are highly automated, taking place in a series of individual electronic “auctions.” The decision to show your ad to a potential consumer is based on pre-determined criteria that are set before the auction takes place.

DISCONNECT #3:

BLIND-TIME BIDDING

HOW TO FIX IT RTB is a tool that should be in every digital advertiser’s toolbox. But to be executed most effectively, your digital media agency needs to be able to access the information that is constantly coming in from all other channels, especially paid search. They should be seeing the five essential reports listed above on a regular schedule— at least monthly.

In addition, you need an agency with a direct connection to a Demand Side Platform (DSP), and the trained staff who know how to set up efficient RTB campaigns and how to optimize them… relentlessly!

WHY IT’S A PROBLEM Think about this. You wouldn’t sit at an auction with your eyes closed, blindly bidding on every item that comes on the block. Yet it’s a bit like working with a blindfold if you’re doing RTB without benefit of the insights that are uncovered routinely through other activities like search marketing.

As mentioned in disconnect #1 above, search can provide important trending information, such as:

• The keywords that most effectively categorize the online properties you want to appear on

• The time of day, and day of week, your customers are most often looking for what you sell

Yes, it may be possible to bring these facts to light in other ways… over time. But why close your eyes to the data you already own through your paid search marketing program?

BLADE CREATIVE BRANDING 7bladebranding.com

WHAT IT IS Your blog should be the living voice of your brand. That means it should always be in tune with the changing needs and interests of your brand community.

A blog is the ideal platform for this because you can publish at any time. Your posts can reflect your brand’s values in response to:

• Seasons• Holidays• Current events• New trends among your consumer audience

Admittedly, this can be hard to sustain—which explains why so many blogs seem to drift off into a world of their own.

No matter how talented they are as writers, bloggers will lose touch with the community when they can’t access the customer information that is constantly being learned in your other marketing activities. Inevitably, despite their best efforts, the blog content becomes disengaged from your core brand messaging themes.

DISCONNECT #4:

FLOGGING A DEAD BLOG

HOW TO FIX IT Maintain a strong brand voice in your blogs and other social media content by ensuring your content creators are constantly receiving the same customer interest and preference data as your branding team. The interaction should result in content that is constantly evolving along with your brand community—like a conversation.

WHY IT’S A PROBLEM Without new inspiration and input from the other activities in the marketing mix, the blog ends up uninspired, dull… essentially lifeless.

This is a problem, because lively and relevant blog content is a key driver of a modern content marketing strategy. Without it, you might continue spending money promoting your content across multiple platforms—but in terms of keeping your brand alive, you’ll be flogging a dead… blog.

BLADE CREATIVE BRANDING 8bladebranding.com

WHAT IT IS When consumers allow you access to their inbox* you must honour their trust by giving them relevant content that shows your brand cares about their interests and concerns.

Email marketing supports sales, so it’s natural that a portion of your email messaging will be discount offers and announcements of seasonal sales; but another very important part should be content that demonstrates how you understand your audience on a deeper, more personal level. Unfortunately, too many email marketing programs fall back on repeated sales messages and seasonal clichés.

* Under Canada’s CASL regulations, marketers must have either

“implied consent,” or “explicit consent,” to send commercial messages

to consumers on their email lists.

DISCONNECT #5:

THE BOXED-IN INBOX

HOW TO FIX IT Make sure your email marketing team is in regular and frequent contact with your branding team. Another way to maintain relevance is to ensure your list is segmented according to interest categories. At a minimum, a segment should be created automatically to tell you where an individual signed up to your list, by inserting a hidden field for “source.” Other segments depend on your circumstances, and could include ckick-throughs, product categories, and so on.

WHY IT’S A PROBLEM If your email program is run by a team that is disconnected from the rest of your marketing, the people running it may not know your brand community very well at all. They will quickly become boxed in to a corner, where they may have nothing more to say than “Hurry, Black Friday Sale!” … or, if it happens to be the middle of August, “Hurry, Black Friday in August Sale!”

When your e-casts have become the oaf at a cocktail party who only wants to sell you something; that’s a sure sign your email marketing has become disconnected from the soul of the brand.

BLADE CREATIVE BRANDING 9bladebranding.com

WHAT IT IS Video, or brand motion picture content, is now an essential part of how winning brands reach out to and engage their communities. This influential medium offers an immersive experience that can create powerful emotions in your audience, causing them to embrace your product or service.

A key mistake marketers make with video is not planning to push it out and promote it, as an integral part of their content marketing program.

DISCONNECT #6:

MISSING THE EMOTION OF MOTION

HOW TO FIX IT Plan carefully, and make sure the team creating your video content is intimately aware of your brand’s character and values—and knows how to use storytelling to bring it to life.

The creative inspiration and control of the overall process must be in the hands of the team that has the closest connection to your brand’s voice and values—in other words, your branding agency.

WHY IT’S A PROBLEM There is a persistent myth that it’s easy to create a clever video that will “go viral”. While that can happen on rare occasions, it makes more sense to avoid rolling the dice on one big (expensive) idea and invest more wisely in multiple (more reasonably priced) videos that tell a multi-dimensional story about your brand, spread over more segments.

The big takeaway is to focus on storytelling that is relevant and memorable to your brand community. Chances are, having your video “go viral” will mean millions of pointless impressions among people who are not interested in your brand. If the clever video is out of sync with your brand values, it will do more harm than good by alienating your own community.

BLADE CREATIVE BRANDING 10bladebranding.com

HOW TO FIX IT As we’ve emphasized throughout this guide, sharing of data and accurate analysis of it—based on brand knowledge—is essential to an effective digital marketing program that delivers maximum ROI.

The key is that the sharing must be centrally coordinated. And the coordinators must be a team that is intimately familiar with the brand character, the brand voice, and the values that attract and bind its brand community. For most marketers, that is their branding and advertising agency.

Connecting all of the data points will result in greater efficiency and higher ROI from core elements of your digital marketing program. This includes:

• Valuable branding data from paid search• Integrated planning for both online

and traditional media• Advanced targeting for Real Time Bidding (RTB)• Compelling email and blog content• Emotionally engaging brand motion picture content

WHY IT’S A PROBLEM When your marketing activities (digital, content marketing, or traditional) are isolated from each other and not coordinated, the data they produce cannot be centralized effectively, which creates broken data points.

It’s like a connect-the-dots puzzle where some of the dots are missing. If you can’t see the pattern, then even the remaining dots you have don’t make much sense on their own.

DISCONNECT #7:

DISCONNECTED DATA POINTS

WHAT IT IS This disconnect is probably the most important strategically, because it is about big-picture analysis of the data collected by the other six.

In the Brand Ecosystem Model (see page 6), we illustrated the activity spheres that sustain a growing brand community. A key function in that model, which allows the system to perpetuate itself, is “R.O.R.” – Review, Optimize, and Redeploy. For this element to work, collecting the right data is essential.

BLADE CREATIVE BRANDING 11bladebranding.com

© 2017 Blade Creative Branding Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without explicit consent is prohibited.

We know the claims and promises of digital media can be confusing—even frustrating.

As a marketer your most important objective is to build the strength and value of your brand. But like many marketers, you may have found the dizzying pace of change in digital media has become a distraction from brand building. It’s easy to be dazzled by the numbers and technology, and forget that Digital is a set of tactics, not a strategy.

This Guide is essential learning about how to connect the elements so that your brand stays strategically connected with its community.

Here are other resources that will shed light on how Blade can build your brand.

1. Visit our website to learn more aboutBlade’s Brand Community Perspective

2. Check out our Brand Edge Blog

3. Sign up for our monthly Brand Edge eNewsletter

4. Watch our Brand Edge Web Series(Now in its second season!)

5. And when you’re ready…

contact@bladebranding.com

1-416-467-4770 | 1-800-392-5233

LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL