In today’s crowded marketplace, brands must strategize how to stand out and nurture lasting connections with customers. This requires going beyond generalized messaging and instead tailoring brand positioning around the attributes that actually appeal to your audience—not those that you merely guess might appeal. But how can you identify those impactful attributes and craft compelling messaging that resonates?
In this post we explored how analyzing sales funnel data, sales drivers, and brand sentiment metrics serves as a compass to guide marketing decisions. By determining which brand perceptions strongly correlate with consideration and purchase behavior, brands gain actionable insights into marketing strategies.
Now, armed with data pinpointing the most influential brand attributes, the next step is learning how to transform these insights into sales growth. In this post, we’ll provide a roadmap for leveraging a brand’s metrics to enhance marketing effectiveness through:
- Identifying the brand attributes that serve as key drivers of consideration and purchase rates.
- Determining optimal message placement across marketing channels.
- Crafting on-brand messaging tailored to customer preferences.
- Tracking performance over time to assess its impact on brand perceptions and purchase behaviors.
With strategic messaging informed by brand metrics and sales driver analysis as a compass, brands can navigate the complex marketing landscape and create enduring customer relationships and sales growth. Let’s explore how research-informed messaging can help guide your brand journey.
Key Brand Metrics
This post includes an overview of several important brand metrics that provide guidance for marketing decisions when analyzed holistically:
- Sales Funnel: illustrates percentages of the target audience in each stage—awareness, consideration, purchase. Identifies areas of falloff.
- Sales Drivers: reveals the extent to which various brand attributes influence consideration and purchase rates.
- Brand Sentiment: illuminates consumer perceptions of your brand and its competitors.
Together these metrics point to impactful brand attributes and opportunities to tailor marketing strategies. Next, we build on these insights to boost sales by optimizing how messages are crafted and placed to maximize brand perceptions of sales drivers most linked to consideration and purchase rates among your audience.
Identifying Key Brand Attributes
The sales driver analysis provides invaluable data on which specific brand attributes have the strongest statistical correlation with driving consideration and purchase decisions. Paired with data on brand sentiment, brands can pinpoint where to focus messaging for maximum impact on consideration and purchase rates.
When evaluating the influential attributes revealed through the sales driver analysis, brands should ask:
- Is our brand sentiment already strong on this attribute? If so, returns may be lower from further investment.
- How large is the gap between our brand and competitors on perceptions of owning each attribute? Bigger gaps represent larger opportunities to stand out.
- Given our brand identity and positioning, can we authentically claim and demonstrate this attribute? Messaging should align with reality.
For example, a company specializing in cleaning commercial buildings may find through its sales driver analysis that environmental safety perceptions strongly drive consideration. However, the brand sentiment data may reveal that they already score highly on this attribute. Instead, this brand may want to focus on the second most important driver of consideration, price, as there is more room to improve and credibly communicate their competitive pricing structure.
In other words, allocating resources to the most impactful sales drivers shouldn’t always take precedence. It’s best to use brand metrics as guides for rational prioritization of messaging to maximize resource allocation.
The sales driver analysis shines a spotlight on the most valuable areas of focus. By applying additional lenses like current sentiment, competitive gaps, and authentic brand associations, brands gain clarity on which attributes offer the greatest potential payoff from compelling, targeted messaging. This provides a data-backed roadmap for creative development and campaign execution.
Optimal Message Placement
Once key attributes are identified, optimal message placement ensures they reach consumers at the right decision-making junctures.
For attributes that are key drivers of initial consideration, brands should cast a wide net by including them in broad communication channels seen early by consumers. This exposes and educates the maximum number of targeted consumers on the attributes most proven to spur consideration.
For example, an outdoor apparel brand should emphasize environmental sustainability—a key consideration driver—prominently in their social media content, digital ads, and TV commercials seen by consumers just becoming aware of the brand. This can pique interest and drive further exploration.
For messaging related to purchase drivers, use more targeted communication channels closer to the final point of sale when consumers are ready to make a transaction. This includes emails sent after a shopping cart has been filled or signage seen in-store when standing in front of the product. Emphasizing the key attributes that motivate purchase decisions where they will have an immediate impact increases conversion likelihood.
For instance, a consumer electronics brand should highlight exceptional customer service and support—an influential purchase driver—in follow-up emails and on in-store displays to nudge consumers from the consideration stage to purchase.
Crafting Compelling Messaging
Once key brand attributes are identified, crafting messaging that brings them to life for your audience is crucial for influencing consideration and purchase decisions. Here are two techniques to test messages and guide creative direction:
Vignette-Style Conjoint:
This method builds a message framework incorporating key attributes identified through the sales driver analysis (e.g., price, quality, value, etc.). A message framework is built with the most important attributes for driving consideration and purchase, as well as different variations of the attributes, known as levels. Various messages are generated by randomly populating the message with different combinations of attribute levels.
In a series of discrete choice tasks, survey respondents are presented with two message variants and asked to pick the one they find most appealing. The results reveal which attribute levels and combinations optimize appeal. For example, suppose a restaurant chain finds that price, quality, and menu options are most associated with consideration and purchase rates. In that case, the messages presented to respondents should systematically vary claims about those attributes. Respondents then choose their preferred message across a number of choice tasks. The message structure may look something like this:
At Brand X, we always prioritize [STATEMENT ABOUT QUALITY]. And unlike our competitors, we offer [STATEMENT ABOUT PRICE]. Come on in and try [STATEMENT ABOUT MENU OPTIONS].
This method reveals the importance of each attribute (i.e., price, quality, and menu options) and the preferred statement describing each attribute. Taken together, an optimal message to enhance these sales drivers is derived.
Pros: Surfaces emotional responses to identify the most compelling messaging combinations.
Cons: Time-intensive for researchers to craft messages that work with a variety of different attribute levels.
Split Sample Message Testing:
This approach splits the target audience into random samples and exposes each one to a slightly different messaging variant. These messages should highlight the key attributes identified by sales driver analysis. For example, if the sales driver analysis reveals the durability attribute is most important when it comes to purchase rates, the brand could test the following messages:
Message A: "Our new shoes are built with a one-of-a-kind foam compound that protects them from wear and tear, even on the toughest of runs."
Message B: "Our new shoes use a patented woven upper material that provides unmatched durability, mile after mile."
In this method, respondents are randomly split into two groups and exposed to either message variation A or message variation B. After viewing the messaging, respondents are asked to rate the message on the attribute that the brand is trying to enhance, in this case the perceived durability of the shoe, to compare their reactions to the different messaging approaches directly. The responses are analyzed to determine which message version garnered the most positive reactions.
Pros: Respondent ratings are not biased by seeing many different variations of a message.
Cons: Fewer message variations are tested compared to the vignette-style conjoint.
Tracking Brand Metrics Over Time
Monitoring metrics over time provides invaluable insights into messaging strategies' longer-term effectiveness and impact. By regularly tracking key performance indicators at periodic intervals, brands can determine whether their messaging yields more positive brand perceptions across the attributes most associated with consideration and purchase rates.
When assessing messaging impact, brands should ideally track ongoing changes in metrics on a monthly or quarterly basis for 6-12 months following the launch of a new campaign. Comparing pre and post-campaign metrics can reveal statistically significant differences demonstrating whether the desired brand and consumer behaviors have been achieved.
For example, increases in brand sentiment scores, specifically on the attributes featured in messaging, can indicate that a campaign resonates with a brand’s customers. Likewise, upward shifts in sales funnel conversion rates, category penetration with new customers, and revenues for targeted products can show a positive messaging impact across the consumer journey.
Conclusion
Strategic messaging is instrumental for brands seeking to earn customer loyalty amid fierce competition. By identifying high-potential brand attributes through sales driver analysis and brand sentiment insights, then crafting targeted messaging and tracking impact over time, brands can realize untapped opportunities for sales growth.
Let us know if you need support bringing your brand’s story to life through informed, impactful messaging based on metrics analysis. We’re ready to help guide your journey.
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