Everything begins with your brand.

Take a look at this year’s Super Bowl commercials.

Pringles. Tide. Budweiser. Hyundai. M&Ms. Pepsi. Coca-Cola. Amazon.

We all know these brands and grew up with them. Certain images come up when we hear their names.

These brands paid an average of $5 million per 30 second commercial to play their ads at the Super Bowl this year. That breaks down to $167,000 per second. That’s a lot of money for half a minute. But it is money well spent.

Because with 110 million people watching the Super Bowl, or one third of the entire U.S. population, that amounts to about 4 cents per view. So depending on the purchasing behaviors afterwards, this could be a nice ROI for product sales.

With the rise of the internet and social media, getting people to pay attention to you is the most important thing you can do as a business.

And it’s not easy with people’s attention scattered all over the place.

There’s checking email, scrolling through Facebook, watching snaps from last night’s party, catching up on the latest Netflix show. The list goes on.

The good news is that a well-rounded, integrated marketing campaign is as effective as ever in promoting your business and raising awareness for your brand. And at a fraction of the cost of a Super Bowl ad.

What is an integrated marketing campaign?

Let’s use an image.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your brand is in the middle of that circle. Your marketing goal as a business is to utilize all those platforms to promote your brand

But in order to use those platforms effectively, you need to begin with your brand itself.

What is your brand?

A good brand should have a logo and tagline that conveys your mission. You should have a target market in mind and then create content that would appeal to that audience.

Take a cup of coffee.

Most people would say a cup of coffee is just a cup of coffee.

 

 

 

 

 

But they are wrong.

Because on any street corner in the United States you will see this:

 

 

 

These places all sell coffee. But their target markets are different so their brands differ.

When we hear Seven Eleven we think fast, cheap, convenient. Get in and get out.

When we hear Starbucks we think fresh, organic, natural and experience. Sit down and chat.

So before beginning any marketing plan you should spend a significant amount of time thinking about your brand development and who your target market is and what kind of content would appeal to that audience.

What happens if you don’t?

Well that’s where Super Bowl ads come in. Because they show exactly what happens when brands don’t know their audience and create ads that backfire.

Two ads that stood out this year were Diet Coke’s dancing woman and Doritos/Mountain Dew’s rap battle.

The contrast is striking.

Here is what marketing looks like when you don’t know your audience.

Twitter’s reaction.

And here is what marketing looks like when you know your audience.

Mountain Dew and Doritos even kept the battle going on Twitter, allowing their fans to join in and vote, comment and tweet.

Knowing your brand and knowing how your brand is perceived by your customers will ensure that you create content that is appealing and keeps people interested in your product.

The last thing you want is to scare them away with a bad tweet, blog post or video because you didn’t understand their preferences. Save that for the Super Bowl.

 

Recent Posts
business womenbasketball and basket