To infinity, and beyond!
How to build a Brand Universe
Digital has fundamentally changed marketing and sales in too many ways to mention. The true value of Digital is that it allows us to travel anywhere, anytime at speeds faster than light with a single click. Still, this power is almost always used in a limited, unconscious, and inconsistent way, which means that it remains virtually untapped.
This is part 2 of a still unknown number of articles in this micro series which initially seems to be about Digital Marketing but sneakily shifts to a broader scope. Should be safe to consume alone, but here is part 1 for convenience.
To infinity, and beyond!
Creating a Brand Universe
As I have written before social channels have brought a major change in how we consume media. We scroll, we don’t care and we forget. The content itself, some of it crap, some stellar, is never seen again. It is not that it ceases to exist, it is just close to impossible to find.
To unlock the full potential of digital we need to create a Universe for what we want to market — a product, service, brand or concept — where all the content, all the dots are connected through hyperdrive space flights.
So the first step in creating a Brand Universe is as simple as that. Start thinking about how to connect the dots, your content, using ancient web technology, hyperlinks! See what I just did there?!
By connecting the dots they are no longer lost, we can always find it, which means that it will deliver value indefinitely. Not only that, each dot is a gateway to find more content.
Pulling people into our Universe
Each dot is a potential entry point to our universe. Wherever a visitor comes from and wherever they enter they are about to find a whole Universe of value to explore. And for each interaction the perceived value just grows.
Let’s face it, social channels are great to reach people but it is not the right place to deliver value and create loyalty. Our main mission should be to pull people into our Universe.
The social platforms will for obvious reasons do whatever they can to make the customer stay in *their* universe, but we have to ask: does it really benefit us? And does it really benefit the customer?
Providing Paths to a Deeper Engagement
Whenever a potential customer is exposed to our product, service or brand there is a golden moment of opportunity. If they get a positive experience then there is a willingness to act, to engage, to learn more, maybe even buy. This is the moment when we need to make sure there are Paths to a Deeper Engagement.
“That’s nothing new, that is just CTA and CRO!” you might say if you are into abbreviations. Well, kind of. Call To Action and Conversion Rate Optimization are both terms describing the process from the perspective of the marketer, what the user should do and how to increase the probability for them to do that. Not irrelevant at all but not what I am talking about.
Paths to a Deeper Engagement (or PDE for those in the know 😜) is 100% from the user perspective, it is about what the user wants to do next. Maybe they are already convinced and cannot wait to part from some of their money, maybe they just want to hang around and see what ‘s more to explore. Remember, we have built a whole Universe of connected islands of value.
Every customer journey is unique. By always providing paths to a deeper engagement we allow the customer to make that journey their own.
Another type of message
A Path to a Deeper Engagement is not only about to connect the dots. It is also about the message.
Most marketing is focused on building awareness and through that hopefully demand. The message can be totally detached from the product, “Taste the feeling!”, “I’m loving it!”, “It’s in the game!”, and still work with the help of a massive budget and constant interruptions. This method is referred to as “pull marketing”. Ok, maybe that is not the standard definition but close enough. In any case, to see this as “pull marketing” requires some mental gymnastics. There is nothing that pulls people anywhere, it is a dead end.
It is pretty obvious what “pull marketing” SHOULD mean: marketing that pulls people into our Universe, that makes them want to engage, that provides a Path to a Deeper Engagement. Think about how that would change the stories we want to tell. This is a part of what I call Value Marketing which I will write about in depth in a future article.
The Center of the Universe
All the parts of a Universe are united by the entity we are marketing. It could be a single thing, such as a product, service or brand, or it could be several, such as a product line, a collaboration between different companies etc. These are the things in the center of the Universe, that holds it together and which everything orbits around.
When a user enters the Universe they can navigate anywhere they want, but there is almost like a gravitational pull to the center of the Universe. This is where we want our customers to be, to become a part of our Universe.
Expanding the Universe
Jumping back to my definition of marketing from the first article:
Marketing is the process of bringing a product or service to the market.
As I hinted back then this definition allows me to include some parts that are not traditionally seen as a part of the marketing mix. In the next article I will show the bigger picture, how to expand the Universe and define the benefits of this way of thinking. Stay tuned!
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