The marketer is a seasoned pragmatic. He likes to launch the ball and she comes back to her quickly. The immediate king. The marketer likes metrics comparable to N-1. The rocket emoji is only beautiful if it is justified by a good CTR, a conversion rate that has doubled or a CPA in the green. In the performance race, we forgot (voluntarily?) The most important KPI: the perception of the brand. Nebuleuse, progressive, even long-term, difficult to measure, it is often ignored, if not even shunned. But if your brand disappeared tomorrow, would your customers cry? A platform signed Léa Pétralie, Head of Content Marketing of Cybercity.
Performance marketing or illusion of success
Digital marketing is no longer dissociated from transactional marketing. He locked himself in a short-termist logic, where the conversion must be fast, even immediate, and attributed to a specific channel. However, as we know, everything that is fast and immediate is also, very often, ephemeral. Transaction does not mean commitment.
Where did the attention given to the user experience? Has the UX become only a marketing term awkwardly associated with design? Does the conquest prevail in retention?
If we take off for a moment our SEO, traffic managers or other Growth Hackers experts, we will all be easily agreed that the worst enemy of a brand is indifference. The entities that survive the longest, despite the crises and disruptions of our time, are those that exist in the minds of consumers, and not only on the web.
Transactional marketing can be soft. If the action / reaction is enjoyable, brands inevitably become interchangeable and, above all, dependent on algorithms and advertising auctions. The model always ends up running out of steam. If you cut the investment tap, what remains of your brand?
The right marketer is an empath
95% of our purchasing decisions come unconsciously and are guided by our emotions. It was Gerald Zaltman, professor at the Harvard Business School, says it. The fantasized war between emotional marketing and rational marketing does not exist. A brand must be able to meet a need by advancing arguments and trigger an action by arousing emotion. It is the right balance of a holistic approach, between convincing and persuading.
Without emotional attachment, a brand remains an option but never becomes a choice.
If a fine understanding of the targets to which the brand is intended remains essential, we neglect a little too often two simple tools that we have (almost) all: common sense and empathy. At Cybercité, we cut the technical analysis of the Search Buyer Personas to our knowledge of cognitive biases. These deviations from which everyone can hardly escape allow marketers to intelligently create an emotional connection with their audience.
Take the effect of simple exposure, for example: this tendency to love something by dint of having seen it or heard regularly. A bit like this mediocre song that too often goes on radio. To develop in its target a feeling of familiarity and confidence, a brand must therefore work its presence, with a large P. Think Global Search: the French pass on average 1h48 per day on social networks, not on Google.
Brands have the floor, users have the last word
And speaking of Google… SEO serves branding, it is obvious. The reverse is also true. Search engines have their own reasoning biases. They value what is sought after. The more a company generates requests associated with its brand, the better the search engines measure the user interest for it, the more the company is put forward in the results pages. If no one is looking for your brand, your SEO will reach a glass ceiling.
To the question “SXO (Search Experience Optimization) really exist?” », The SEO community does not agree (but when is it really?). However, it is clear that search engines monitor user behavior better and better on their results pages, and are interested in it closely. Pogo-Sticking, Dwell Time, Click-Skips, Branded Queries, Reviews, Shares, etc.: The user experience is indeed a full-fledged referencing criterion.
And if this notion is debated, it is because it disturbs. Unlike the three historic SEO pillars (technique, content, popularity), this is a criterion that can hardly be checked and measured, and where quick-wins are worth nothing. The ball is in the user camp, and it is they who decide to whom they relaunch it. Very often, it was the one who marked their mind. The famous phenomenon Top of Mind.
Tell your brand to unite your audiences
You are 22 times more likely to remember information when it is presented in the form of a story. In other words, a user will more easily retain your brand if you introduce it thanks to a well -licked story.
Tell stories, everyone can do it. But telling good stories is not given to everyone. Among marketers, storytelling is in all mouths but, curiously, few are those who really apply it. Too many companies still confuse brand narrative and chronology of the brand’s journey. Let’s say it once and for all: the pages that are we? And our history should not be pale Wikipedia Copycats.
A good brand story is a story that has relief. A story made of ups and downs, tensions and resolutions. Effective storytelling is not mono-expressive; He gives his audience several emotions. To embark your audience and have it adhered to your brand universe, you must mention its own empathy. Let us no longer underestimate the ability of users to feel and sympathize for us and with us.
A brand that is told is a brand that exists beyond its products, in the minds of its targets, and, by ricochet, a brand that improves its Reach SEO.
As a marketer, before defining a downstream strategy, let us try to answer a simple question: if our brand ceased to exist tomorrow, how many people would realize it? Who would seek to find her? The conversion objectives do not justify the negligence of the brand footprint. Being visible is no longer enough. You must be memorable. Whenever you deprive your branding, you penalize the rest of your strategic levers – and inevitably double your SEO and media investments.
