The Future of Traffic: How to Balance Branding and Direct Response
Ryan Deiss
TLDR: Digital commerce is evolving towards a more “personalized” and customer oriented approach. 3 Big Shifts you need to pay attention to.
What’s happening in digital commerce in 2016?
Big Shift #1: Merging of Branding and Direct Response
Companies that focus on each of these individually will eventually go broke. Don’t let that happen to you.
The Problem:
Branding alone will go cause your company to bleed out if you never figure out how to ask for the order.
Direct Response will go broke because everyone hates it. (It’s irritating and over stimulating for customers). You know this to be true from your personal experience.
You need to think of your relationship with customers as a bank vault. The vault is empty at the beginning of the relationship. You will have to build trust prior to asking for the sale. (Making a withdrawal) A bank doesn’t give you money when you set up a bank account, you need to make deposits, and the same is true for customers.
JW: This is why I have been hammering about personal relationships from Day One. There is nothing better in terms of building your business and doing RCS. If you ever how a downfall, you have a list of people you can call to help with new promotions or feedback on current campaigns. It is invaluable.
You need to build a relational equity for your business. Not just once, but ongoing.
When you ask a prospect for money, they will ask themselves these questions:
“Do I know you?”
“Do I like you?”
“Do I trust you?”
JW: Trust is more important today in selling that at any other point in my career that I can recall. Due to so many online scams, especially with the “free trial scam” people have been tainted, and it takes a lot more to win trust today, but you must make the effort as once you achieve the trust, you often win a life-long fan.
New definitions of branding and selling:
– Branding: Making deposits into a prospect’s relational equity account.
– Selling: A withdrawal from a customer’s relational equity account.
As such you need to maintain a balance. Too many withdrawals will break a customer’s trust!
Building a Relational Equity with Marketing:
Method 1: Make them laugh: Any time you make someone laugh, they like you more and it builds relational equity.
Examples from Jerry:
Terry Tate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbSpAsJSZPc
Bud Light: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k77-EW2fq3Q
Method 2: Make them cry (a good cry): Tap into feelings and deeper memory, pull it out and attach your brand to it.
Example from Ryan from Mad Men:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suRDUFpsHus
Examples from Jerry:
Dove Ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpaOjMXyJGk
Google Ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UejEaBAYIbc
Method 3: Make them feel part or something: Be authentic, take a stand and let people know what you are all about so people can know if they want to be a part of it.
Examples from Jerry:
Apple Think Different: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SswMzUWOiJg
Haggen Daas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEpenoD9-Ts
Nike Experience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Oag8iBB7HE
Nike: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgJMBAwMHU8
Action Step: Make a list of what you believe (brand), what you stand against, and anything the people might be attracted to.
Also, listen to the podcast we did with Erika on Feb. 16th as she discusses branding. Great stuff.
Method 4: Deliver actual Value in advance: The goal is to build relational equity with the potential customers. Pixeled audience (Google and Facebook) through great content.
Lesson: The future isn’t about getting the cheapest clicks, it’s about who has the most people pixeled. This is from the presentation last year as email open rates continue to diminish over time.
Big Shift #2: Omni channel retail and the shift toward market-centric business models.
Important: A website is not a business model, it’s a LOCATION.
Focus on pleasing the customer. Be customer-centric, not product-centric.
Define your business by WHY you serve, not WHAT you do and Serve a market.
Example: Dell = Product
Apple= Customer
JW: Who has a crazed user base? Apple is not without its critics, and groups that hate them. This is what Erika refers to as being “Unpopular” while still being a major brand. Focus on your core group and screw the rest. You will be more profitable that way.
Engage with conversations your market is having, don’t start your own.
It’s about benefits, not features. Win their hearts, not their wallets.
JW: Use Facebook Insights in order to know what the market is discussing and follow suit. Don’t try and reinvent the wheel, discuss the hot topics with your unique spin and show why following your lead will give them better results/benefits.
Big Shift #3: The emergence of Digital Marketing as a true profession.
A digital marketer’s mission is not to train business owners (they should be thinking about their small business), but rather to train digital marketers to serve small businesses.
There are 8 core disciplines of digital marketing represented by the certifications within Digital Marketer (all of which will will be covering in the coming months with our testing and review):
1. Conversion Funnels
2. Content Marketing
3. Customer Acquisition
4. Email Marketing
5. Social Media
6. Search Marketing
7. Data and Analytics
8. Testing and Optimization
Assign certain certifications to members of your team, to expand your reach and effectiveness.
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