Use Brand Response Marketing To Drive Conversions

This article was originally published on Forbes

The world of media and brand response marketing has evolved tremendously in the last decade. It's now quicker, more data-driven and more multidimensional than ever before.

The hard sell is not the best way to earn the interest and loyalty of your customers. In today's more patient style of marketing, the aim is now customer seduction: wooing people into a long-term, mutually beneficial relationship rather than a short-term interaction. Brand response marketing is an effective strategy for both developing lasting customer relationships and achieving desired outcomes.

What Is Brand Response Marketing?

Brand response marketing combines brand marketing and direct response advertising into a single campaign distributed across channels. Direct response advertising asks the audience to call a number, click a button or take some other immediate action. Brand marketing, on the other hand, requires customers to see a message many times, building awareness and recognition gradually until they are ready to purchase.

Brand response marketing blends the best of both approaches, attracting people with a compelling narrative (brand marketing) and securing their attention with a call to action (direct response advertising). It enables you to spread the word about your offering, establish your brand's narrative and elicit an audience response while increasing online traffic and sales.

A brand response campaign is often a good antidote to advertising fatigue. An engaging commercial can create emotional connections, helping to pique interest in your product, encourage ongoing engagement and build a loyal customer base.

What Is The Difference Between Direct Response And Brand Response?

Direct response and brand response campaigns remain dominant in the advertising landscape, yet the line between the two can be blurry. The major distinction is prioritization — direct response focuses on short-to-medium-term ROI, while brand response is a long-term strategy. In a direct response campaign, the primary objective is to compel an audience to take a specified action to generate leads and convert them into sales. A brand response campaign, on the other hand, has multiple goals: promoting particular actions, fostering brand engagement and eliciting emotional reactions over time.

Four Elements Of A Successful Brand Response Campaign

Customers typically assess a brand on four distinct elements, which will define the success of your brand response campaign:

• Quality: Customers make judgments about a brand based on its perceived and actual quality. Quality is vital to impressing customers and preserving their loyalty so they will continue to buy from your brand in the future.

• Credibility: Customers judge credibility on three metrics: expertise, trust and charisma. Brand credibility, in turn, has a substantial impact on the emotional antecedents of consumer loyalty. Satisfaction is particularly significant as an emotional antecedent. Customers are happy when they feel your business honors its commitments.

• Consideration: Customers compare the relevance of your offering to their specific requirements. Consideration assesses customers' willingness to purchase from a brand they are familiar with. People who might consider supporting a brand are a subset of those who are aware of it. Customers can't appraise a brand they've never heard of. 

• Superiority: Customers evaluate if your brand is superior to competitors in the market. They also react to your brand based on their emotional response. While your brand might directly elicit emotions, consumers react emotionally to how a brand makes them feel about themselves.  

Tips For Creating A Campaign To Drive Conversions

1. Know who you are trying to reach.

Avoid targeting a wide range of demographics with your brand response campaign. It's better to focus on a specific target audience, depending on the product or service you are promoting.

Determine your audience by looking at factors like income and access to certain devices, as well as broad interests that are relevant to your business. Media buyers utilize that information to make judgments, so the closer you can describe your ideal audience, the better your chances are of reaching them.

2. Improve your online presence.

Be sure you are making use of as many media channels as possible. Online campaigns can accomplish your goals at a much lower cost than TV advertising. Focusing on digital-first may allow you to reach untapped audiences before running TV campaigns. If one of your campaign goals is to improve brand visibility and engagement, start by establishing and building an active presence on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Social media engagement is no longer a "bonus" tactic but an essential.

3. Let the ads do the talking.

Use hashtags in your commercials to spark customers' curiosity and improve online brand awareness and engagement. This is a common brand response marketing tactic where, instead of using phrases like "Call this number" or "Shop now," you close a spot with a tagline or hashtag. This puts the onus on the viewer to take action by visiting the website or conducting a quick online search for your brand.

4. Outline a call to action.

Define the specific action you want your audience to take after seeing a commercial — whether it’s making a purchase, requesting additional information or subscribing to a newsletter. This action will serve as the guiding thematic touchstone for the whole spot, so be thoughtful and intentional about your choice.

5. Tell a story.

Storytelling is always the most effective technique to catch your audience's attention and convey information. This is true whether you're designing a commercial, writing a print piece or generating digital content. In a fragmented media environment, you can break through the clutter and reach your audience if you build a unique, specialized brand story. To engage with your audience on a deeper level, tell a narrative that resonates with them and your brand's core principles. 

Successful brand response campaigns strengthen your brand by increasing brand loyalty and generating a demonstrable, positive ROI. With the brand response method, you don't aggressively market your goods or services. Instead, you capture hearts and minds, ensuring that your brand is the first one buyers consider as they weigh their options in the future.