There’s a reason why big businesses build their brand consistency through marketing strategies and campaigns over a long period of time. Because they work! Consistency delivers results.
Smaller businesses often make the mistake of re-inventing their marketing for each and every post and campaign. This is usually driven by the desire of the MD or marketing team, who are bored of seeing it, and assume their customers are too.
The heart of the problem lies with social media. Marketing teams monitor their own feeds day in, day out, looking at the same content. Boring, right? It’s also counterproductive, as it can lead to over analysis and making changes that are not necessary.
Customers don’t constantly scroll through a business’s social media feeds day after day. In fact, they may only see your content once in a while, and if they do, they’re unlikely to stop and view it the first time. It is when content is shown again, and they begin to recognise it, that brand recognition is generated.
Build up brand consistency
Brand recognition breeds brand loyalty. Brand loyalty becomes lifetime sales and advocacy. The Holy Grail of marketing!
Recently I shared this video of a very old TV ad for Castrol GTX.
It was last shown in about 1984. That’s 36 years ago, but when I shared it to LinkedIn, everyone remembered it instantly! Some of those who commented, even said that they sought out roles at Castrol, inspired by this ad.
What seemed at the time to be an ad for engine oil, stuck in people’s minds, inspired people, generated massive sales and is still remembered to this day.
When this ad was aired, there was no such thing as a viral marketing campaign, there were no engine oil influencers, there were only 4 TV channels in the UK and only 2 showed any ads!
So how did the ad cut through?
To my mind the formula is simplicity and consistency. The ad is straight forward, well produced, single minded, has great emotive music, intrigue (how do they make the oil follow that line?) and it was used consistently for an exceptionally long time.
Ads tend not to be made like this anymore, and if they are, with production being so cheap, ads can now be used and thrown away as marketers move on to the next new thing. Though technology has developed massively, and society is more sophisticated than it was in the 1980’s, people still need to be exposed to brands with consistent messages and over a long time.
If we can help you increase your brand share, please get in touch.
