I was in a client meeting the other day when our client was talking about Direct Response vs. Brand Awareness KPI’s. He was talking about a Brand Awareness of a product when all of the sudden he spitted out, “We need to focus on more engagement based metrics.” I wanted to stop and correct him, but because his mini-tangent (think more of an on the spot brainstorm) was producing a lot of great stuff. My first thought was, “um…I thought we were talking Brand Awareness.” Then I realized that, like a lot of people I run into, he thought that the strategies are one in the same. Guess what, they are DIFFERENT. Since the debate over how to measure engagement is very well documented within the industry, I’m not going to go into the argument. My goal is to explain the difference in strategies.
Last weekend one of my closest friends turned 30, and like a good friend, I drove down to Louisville for the occasion. I only knew 2 other people going into the weekend. This is the perfect way to explain Awareness vs. Engagement. During the evening, I met at least 30 to 40 new people (counting the waiters and bar tenders). If you count all of the people in the bar that I passed by, made eye contact with, bumped into, etc., then you can say that my made an “Impression” on even more (OK, that was WAY cheese…but it does emphasis a point). Ok, back to the point. I interacted with hundreds of people that night ….90% of which forgot that I existed ½ second after we “met.” Even out of the handful of people I actually had more than a 3 word conversation with, I’m sure only about 5 to 7 of them actually remember me (we can measure that by how many LinkedIn invitations are accepted). I know this because those were the only 3 to 4 that were interesting enough hold my attention as well. Just because you have an “impression” doesn’t mean you were engaged with the person….even if all signs say you should have been. Just because I said high, shook someone’s hand, and talk for a minutes doesn’t mean that I will remember them (ditto for that other person).
Ok, back to strategy. Some brands need to be introduced to the world while others need to control the conversation. Basically:
- Awareness = Saying high in enough place that people start to recognize you
- Engagement = saying something long enough for people to remember you
While measuring impressions and clicks are great KPIs, remember that you are just saying hello. Awareness campaigns are built around that mentality. Say hello to as many people that might be interested. This is a great strategy for new brands or products. Please be causes that the strategy is limited. Unless you can measure how people perceive your brand’s “hello” you can’t call it engagement….just as I can’t say that I know the Swedish model in the corn unless I’ve actually help a conversation with her.
Measuring the “hello” isn’t easy because it involved interpreting feels with data. By using bounce rate, success events like email signups, time-on-site, and pages per visit, a brand can start to measure how affective its advertising/content is at maintaining the customer’s attention. Both strategies are highly affective given the goals of the brand…and thus the search campaign. At the end of the day if you are looking at the wrong KPIs, you are going to spend a lot of many and time accomplishing nothing. Pick the right strategy, use the right terminology, and look at the right KPIs……do you want to say “Hello I’m Brand X and I’m New” or do you want to be the life of the party. Both are highly effective at driving sales….given that you are looking at the right KPIs.
