Making brands more distinctive

I love facts, data, stats and figures.

They make me feel professional, important, useful even.

And as a marketeer there is nothing better than hearing that one of your latest campaigns has performed better than a client’s previous effort. We love it, post it, add it to case studies, high five and take the afternoon off.

So we’re blessed in this day and age that we can measure performance. But are we? There’s always a nagging doubt that we’re actually doing is simply monitoring what the social media and digital channels allow us to. We may not really be measuring anything of significance at all.

As the old adage says, weighing the pig (Vegan alternatives are available) won’t make it any fatter.

For example, take bounce rates. They are the percentage of visitors who leave a website after visiting only one page. A high bounce rate is seen as negative. But what if the bouncer has gleaned exactly what they need on that one-page visit? They’ve had an efficient and simple trip to your website and they love you for it. The measurement suggests you should be making them click through more pages to find what they want. Ask yourself this – is that what you would want to have to do? No. The wrong thing may be being measured and worse it may lead to making the brand experience even worse.

So, we assume that the ability to monitor improves performance. I’m not sure it always does.

The best piece of feedback I have received recently was from a university client saying that the campaign we produced, when presented internally and tested with prospective students, had generated a great deal of excitement. Colleagues and prospects loved the campaign. They were excited that the brand had a campaign that everyone could get behind. A campaign that triggered the ambition and emotions they felt.

Yes, the campaign delivered excitement. Excitement is arousal. It sends chemicals around your body, it stimulates emotion. The audience was excited when testing was done. It made them feel attracted to the brand, they wanted more.  And excitement makes people act. It makes them do things, like click, watch and buy. But it’s not part of the measurement so won’t appear as a data point. Yet it is the most fundamental part of making the campaign a success.

So make sure you’re measuring more than what you can monitor. That may be where real progress in performance lies.