From the climate emergency to food insecurity, labour shortages, gender inequity, and the housing crisis – to name a few – we’re facing mountainous challenges nationwide.
The good news? People across the country are endlessly advocating for change. We see it all the time – in the news, on the Hill, on social media.
But with so many voices vying to influence people in power, how can anyone break through the noise?
This is a question routinely shared among our clients in the third sector, including national and local non-profits, associations, and other, member-based organizations – each with its own agenda.
It’s an ongoing challenge to effectively engage elected officials on issues that matter. It takes a groundswell to impact change.
After more than two decades supporting our clients’ advocacy efforts, we saw an opportunity to bridge a gap in the online-advocacy market. The few platforms that existed were either restrictive in functionality or priced solely for heavy campaigning.
So, as a brand consultancy with specialized digital expertise, we built a new solution, one that would help organizations big and small more easily rally their supporters, connect their message to policy influencers, and, ultimately, amplify their voice.
Meet Zembaly™, the easiest way to power change
Zembaly™ is a one-way communications tool that makes online advocacy easier than ever. With a few clicks, you can create, share, and track the performance of online advocacy campaigns, connecting your audience or members to federal and provincial government.
Zembaly™ solves some of the most common pain points associated with online advocacy. It empowers you to create change intuitively and conveniently. Here are a few examples of how the platform works for you.
Powerful customization
Other platforms offer limited functionally when building a campaign. Zembaly™ lets you visually customize more elements of your landing pages, further connecting your message to your brand. As well, you can set an expiration date, preview your campaigns for proofing or approval pre-launch, and easily run bilingual campaigns in both official languages.
An extension of your team
Not every organization has an advocacy or government-relations department. If you’re a small or mid-sized organization, Zembaly™ gives you a strategic advantage. It empowers you to swiftly mobilize support for your cause and get your message across with little demand on resources.
Tiered pricing
Some advocacy platforms can be expensive or exclusively subscription-based. Zembaly™ offers pay-per-use and subscription-based pricing, accommodating teams of all sizes. As well, the custom Enterprise plan is great for large organizations, like associations, that tackle multiple issues both federally and provincially.
Member engagement
Speaking of associations, it can be difficult, at times, to get your boards or chapters to advocate for big-picture issues. But every voice matters in ladering pressure up the Hill. With Zembaly™, you can set up campaigns on behalf of your members – tailored to applicable provinces and representative types (including Senators, MPs, and MPPs) – making it easy for them to contribute to the groundswell.
Or, give your members their own version of Zembaly™, a white-labeled tool to launch campaigns for issues closer to home. That’s added value when it comes time to renew their membership.
You’ve got a Hill to climb
We built Zembaly™ to put power in the hands of those who need it. Whether you’re a national association or grassroots underdog, our platform does the heavy lifting for you, offering a simpler, more flexible way to advance your cause in Canada.
Ready to fight the good fight?Learn more about Zembaly™ – including features like instant social media promotion and real-time campaign reporting.
Or, contact us today to discuss your specific advocacy needs. We’re ready when you are.
Search engines help people find what they’re looking for online. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) helps people find you. It’s simple, right?
In theory.
While the role of SEO is easy to understand, the path to actually scaling a search engine results page (SERP) takes a bit more effort – and we’re not just talking about using keywords.
For an SEO strategy to be effective, it needs to be the sum of many parts, like any marketing initiative. It’s about playing the long game and considering all factors that contribute to your website’s favorability among search engines (read: Google).
As a starting point, let’s explore the fundamental pillars at play in Google’s ranking algorithm: on-site SEO, off-site SEO, and technical SEO.
On-Site SEO
On-site SEO, also called on-page SEO, is all about optimizing your website’s content, the elements that help search engines crawl and index a page. It’s everything you can fully control.
On-site SEO includes:
titles and title tags;
headers;
visuals;
internal links; and
keywords.
A big piece of on-site SEO is about making sure your content serves a reader’s search intent, that it’s actually helpful. (Who knew?) This is where audience and keyword research come into play, helping you build a resonant topic roadmap and keyword strategy. Tools like SparkToro, which we often use for audience insights, are invaluable.
Off-site SEO, or off-page SEO, refers to externally applied tactics you can use to help boost your search ranking – or, in this case, your reputation.
Content that matches Google’s E-E-A-T criteria, proving Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, is considered higher in quality and rewarded as a result.
In addition to publishing valuable, informed content, there are many off-site venues to help demonstrate E-E-A-T.
Technical SEO often gets overlooked, but it’s a key player in the SEO trilogy. It refers to the process of optimizing the…well…technical requirements search engines demand of your website, including activities aimed at enhancing the user experience.
Note that these technical considerations are Google-confirmed ranking factors. No matter how brilliant your content is, if your website doesn’t load fast enough, for example, visitors are going to bounce, and Google will interpret that as a negative user experience, harming your ranking.
Also, at a basic-functions level, technical SEO is fundamental in ensuring search engines can effectively crawl your site. This comes down to paying special attention to how your pages link together. Check out these examples of SEO-friendly site architectures for guidance.
Don’t forget the maintenance
Like everything, it’s not enough to set it and forget it. Your website is constantly changing, so your SEO strategy should change, too. Something as seemingly minor as adding a new web page or changing a URL can affect your entire SEO structure, so carve out time to review your strategy throughout the year.
Note: there are a number of tools available to help you track and improve your search performance. These include a suite of free tools available from Google.
Additional business benefits of SEO
Web traffic isn’t the only benefit of SEO. Consider the knowledge you’ll gain from researching your target audiences, insights you can use to inform your messaging and positioning.
You can also find added value in tools like semrush, which lets you easily conduct market research on your competitors; not only can you see which keywords they’re prioritizing in their content, but you can also see which pages of theirs are driving the most traffic, and even the extent to which they’re advertising.
Other advantages include a better understanding of your website’s analytics, not to mention web environments themselves. And the list goes on.
Searching for more web traffic?
SEO plays a significant role in boosting your website’s visibility and driving traffic to your pages – but don’t expect immediate results. The best results take time and a comprehensive approach that incorporates on-site, off-site, and technical SEO best practices. What’s above only scratches the surface.
If you’re ready to learn more about the many ways to improve your search ranking, our digital team is ready to help. Contact us today to get started.
Twenty years ago, digital spaces were far from the centre of business and commerce. But now, your company’s landing page is often the first touch point consumers have with your brand. This digital-first approach to commerce opens up an array of opportunities, but it also comes with the added responsibility of ensuring your website is accessible to all. Fortunately, all it takes is a few thoughtful and proactive measures. Our website accessibility checklist helps you meet Canadian standards, all while building a website everyone can navigate.
Website Accessibility: What It Entails and Why It Matters
Accessible web design is important not just because it can boost your reputation or engender customer loyalty, but also because human-centric business practices are an ethical necessity.
So what goes into building a website that caters to a diverse audience? Let’s dive deeper into digital accessibility.
Your Checklist For Better Website Accessibility
This five-step checklist will help you implement several simple yet impactful changes to the accessibility of your website design. It’s your guide to digital inclusivity.
1. Mobile vs Desktop View
Remember to optimize both the mobile and the desktop experience. Companies that optimize their desktop design often overlook similar accommodations for their mobile website, yet many users land on your site first via a mobile browser.
Mobile designs should be simple and clean, with easily clickable calls to action (CTA) near the centre of the screen. Also, place navigation bars at the bottom of the screen to better account for the way most people hold their phones.
Individuals with visual or reading impairments may use a screen reader to hear what’s written on your website. You can optimize your site for screen readers by keeping text both clear and descriptive, structuring your HTML with relevant tags—indicating the copy language in the lang attribute—and using ARIA roles. Sounds complicated. But don’t stress: this is common ground for experienced web designers and developers.
Finally, before you tick mobile optimization off your list, test your design with a diverse crowd to catch any potential oversights.
2. Alt Text
It’s likely your website includes images to add visual interest, context, or brand positioning elements. Imagine you’re navigating the site without these attributes. Would your experience live up to the same standard with just text? Unlikely. Which is why alt text is a critical component of digital accessibility.
Alt text is embedded in your code and describes the image to those using visual assistant technology like screen readers. Ideally, this text should be concise, descriptive, and a complete sentence.
Check out the difference in quality between these examples and note how the final example adequately evokes the image just through text.
Bad = “Img.23457919”
Better = “Picture of a student looking into a microscope.”
Best = “A chemistry student wearing a white lab coat peers down into a microscope. They’re holding a yellow pencil and a pad of lined paper, taking notes of what they see.”
Select a typeface that’s easy to distinguish between characters. This means avoiding fonts that blend letters together or make distinct characters appear similar. Also, choose text that contrasts with your background to make reading easier. (More on typography here.)
4. Colour Palette
The importance of designing your website with highly contrasting colour schemes is hard to overstate. You’ve likely already incorporated certain colours into your branding campaigns and logo design—if so, keep your website consistent with this recognizable scheme. However, make sure you pair highly contrasting hues within that palette throughout your web design.
Playing with contrast not only makes it easier for visually impaired users to navigate your site, it also serves as an excellent design principle in general. If your current brand colours are low contrast, you might want to revamp your aesthetics to improve accessibility.
5. Compliance with Canadian Web Accessibility Laws
Your website accessibility checklist should ensure that you maintain total compliance with Canadian web regulations, such as the Standard on Web Accessibility, the Accessible Canada Act, and various regional protocols. Compliance not only legally shields your website, but also serves as a comprehensive de facto website accessibility checklist to improve your design.
Here’s a basic overview of some of the web design elements to help you maintain compliance with Canadian and regional laws:
Font readability for visually impaired website visitors
Clear section headers that provide structure
Resizable layout for multiple screen types
Colour contrast that helps design elements stand out
Captioning, transcriptions, and descriptions for any video content
Navigability via keyboard, rather than a mouse
Principles of accessibility applied to all digital documents or forms
Tick Off Your Website Accessibility Checklist With Alphabet®
One of the best ways to ensure that your website serves the needs of all potential users is to work with experts. Leading specialists in design and branding, like Alphabet®, help you create dynamic and engaging digital experiences that follow ACA and AODA guidelines (and the protocols of your province). Are you ready to reimagine your web design with inclusive design principles? We’re here to help with everything from brand strategy and identity to crafting your messaging for the digital age. Reach out today. Together, we’ll uncover the truth of your brand—so you can integrate, execute, and live it throughout your entire organization.
These tiny but mighty lines were probably born in a room full of whiskey-steeped mad men in the ’50s. They’ve since helped countless businesses become household names. But are they still valuable?
We’ve come a long way from Madison Avenue. Smaller attention spans, smaller screens – in today’s digital world, brands need to maximize every second, word, and pixel in their marketing and communications. Some argue taglines aren’t the best use of real estate.
Our take? While the playing field has changed, taglines are still a powerful way to reinforce your brand. If anything, they’re more important than they’ve ever been. In a saturated market, a tagline is yet another tool to differentiate and build memorability through consistency.
Let’s take a closer look at the most important words your brand will ever stand behind.
What’s a tagline?
A tagline is a mental shorthand. It’s your brand promise distilled into a handful of words (usually two to eight) that tell your audience what you stand for or what you can do for them.
But don’t be confused. Like a name or logo, a tagline by itself can’t tell your full brand story – and nor should it. It’s but a single, mnemonic marketing device designed to draw people into a bigger brand narrative.
A tagline can also be a campaign hook. Some people call these slogans, or straplines, but there’s no consensus, so we’ll stick to taglines for the purpose of this article.
Effective taglines are nuanced, memorable, and connotative. They flow with a satisfying cadence and stick to your consciousness like ketchup to fries (ahem – I’m lovin’ it – ahem). They’re corporate poetry at its finest.
But taglines aren’t easy to write. As author Cameron Day puts it, “Most great taglines waste no words. One word cannot be easily swapped out. It can’t be improved upon.”
It can’t be improved upon.
It. Can’t. Get. Any. Better.
No pressure, right?
What makes a good tagline?
So, how do you write the perfect tagline? While there’s no silver bullet for coining the next Think Different, there are few principles you can follow to steer clear of a dud.
Simple but meaningful
Nothing’s worse than trying to decipher a string of buzzwords so far detached from an organization’s business you feel lost in space. Reimagine the possible. Uncover tomorrow. Innovation, redefined. Worse yet, toss in a verbified noun. Together we data. Painful, right?
Try these tactics:
Keep it short (the rule of three is a good place to start)
Try not to confuse or mislead people
Be intentional and intelligible
Focus on a benefit
Consider this old tagline from Slack: Where work happens. Simple? Check. Understandable? Check. Tied to a user benefit (productivity)? Check. It’s a home run.
(Note: Slack has since changed its tagline to Where the future works. It’s got a nice double meaning, but it’s less specific. It could belong to any “progressive” company.)
Image: Russell Shaw Design
Here’s another example, a tagline we devised for Tourism Kingston as part of a bigger rebrand. On the surface, Fresh Made Daily feels redundant. A layer deeper, it’s an accurate reflection of what to expect from Kingston, Ontario. From its world-renowned research institutions to its music, food, and maker culture, there’s something new coming from Kingston every day. A newness that’s always changing.
Undeniably you
Almost every article on the topic says taglines should be distinct. We say on brand.
Your brand’s verbal identity is just as important as its visual identity. Therefore, any personality traits in your messaging should surface in your taglines.
Canned water company Liquid Death is a great example. Its tagline could’ve been Quench your thirst, but as a brand that’s intentionally humorous about its heavy-metal swagger, it opted for Murder your thirst. It’s a simple tagline made memorable by an appropriate edge to the language. Sometimes that’s all it takes.
Image: Tribu Creative
A bridge between your brand and audience
Mike Reed, Co-founder and Executive Creative Director at Reed Words, a global verbal branding agency, might’ve said it best:
“Good [tag]lines are built from truths in both the brand and the audience: what you’re offering, and what people are looking for.”
This was the case when we partnered with Canadian Parents for French (CPF) to launch a national recruitment campaign. The goal was to encourage Canadians to consider a meaningful career teaching French, as there aren’t enough French-second-language teachers to meet the demand.
Here’s how it maps to Mike’s advice:
Brand truth: prioritizing the French language
Audience truth: people don’t want a job; they want a sense of purpose
The line was right in front of us.
No clichés
Clichés do to brand language what crocs did to fashion: consume originality. (Sorry not sorry.) While there’s a case for being conversational, there’s a difference between familiarity and sameness. Just look at this list of taglines and headlines curated by copywriting authority Vikki Ross.
Just Do It worked for Nike, but no one’s Nike but Nike, and no one’s keen on being told what to do, as harmless as it may seem. So, Don’t Do It™, unless you’re sure the context you’re operating within merits the risk.
Full transparency: we considered the tagline Live Better for a brand campaign for our client Minto Communities Ottawa. Fortunately, we realized it could feel patronizing, as if prospective homeowners aren’t currently happy with their quality of life. We then pivoted to Built for Better, a more fitting and on-brand choice.
Emotionally positioned
There’s no formula for writing a winning tagline (like a lot of creative endeavors, it’s educated guesswork), but there’s plenty of brain science to help.
Taglines can also employ tactics like cognitive dissonance to evoke feelings of discomfort. Take Hallmark’s old tagline of When you care enough to send the very best. What it’s really saying is, “You’re going to feel guilty if you choose a less expensive product.”
Some angles are more aggressive than others, so pick your words wisely and ensure they align with your values. Here are some other examples of emotional positioning.
Image: Capterra
From brand to campaign.
At the brand level, taglines hold the potential to strengthen awareness and recall. They can be powerful brand builders, reinforcing your identity and swaying audience perceptions.
Taglines also come in handy when connected to an offering or campaign. They can answer or resolve creative executions. The poster series below, part of a recruitment campaign we developed with the Tourism Industry Association of Ontario, is a great example.
Here, the tagline Work doesn’t suck gives context to the headlines. Together, the two tell a captivating story: this unexpected circumstance could be your job.
The same goes for Tinder’s first global campaign, which celebrates the vibrancy of the app’s relationship possibilities. Yes, you can argue the tagline It starts with a swipe isn’t necessary (doesn’t the logo say enough?), but there’s a certain satisfaction and memorability in how it answers the headlines. It secures Tinder as the genesis of the outcome.
Image: Tinder Newsroom
The bottom line.
Whether it’s at the brand or campaign level, taglines should be simple, meaningful, and easy to remember. Some work and some don’t (we’re looking at you, Regina Tourism), but that’s up to your market to decide.
So, take your time and give it time – time to craft and time to root. Adoption won’t happen overnight, especially if you’re repositioning. Remember that a tagline is an investment, so Make Those Words Count™.
Need help communicating?
Tagline, messaging framework, multi-channel campaign – if you need words, we can help articulate your story and turn it into a powerful business driver.
Deciding how to spend your marketing budget can place you in a paradox of choice. Do you lean into traditional or digital channels? Should you choose the better ad space at a higher price point for a shorter time? Or run a longer campaign for less upfront costs? Effective media planning can point you in the right direction.
It’s not just about purchasing ad space. Media planning is a holistic strategy in which you choose, implement, and monitor your marketing campaigns. In general, there’s a three-step process:
Thoroughly research your target audience’s relationship with media and your brand.
With these insights, your media team creates specific and trackable goals for the marketing campaign.
Then, the creatives take the lead and develop your marketing assets.
However, the messaging and design for the campaign must be consistent across channels to reach the target audience. It’s a delicate balance, keeping brand messaging consistent while capturing the nuance to perform well in each media channel. It’s also about speaking to the end-user’s pain point and providing a solution.
Good media planning will connect your brand to your audience. When done well, it’s a powerful way to achieve an objective. It’s also a lesson on how to use your marketing budget efficiently. When you spend money intentionally, you see a better return on investment (ROI).
Consider this your guide to the media planning process. With more details for each step and an overview of the different types of media channels you might consider. So you can confidently build a media strategy for your marketing plan.
What Is Media Planning?
Media planning is the process of creating and implementing a media strategy for your business. In short, you identify your audiences and conduct research, identify the most relevant media channels and outlets, and develop a plan aligned with your business goals.
In media planning, marketers identify the how, what, who, and why of every decision. It’s the strategy the media team uses to select what channels are best to communicate with the audience and how best to use those channels.
A successful media plan boosts your ROI, increases brand awareness and brand loyalty, and supports your general brand strategy. It also serves as a road map that guides your marketing activities and maximizes the impact of your campaigns.
Media Planning vs Media Buying
Media planning and media buying are both part of a marketing campaign. However, media buying should be treated as a step in the larger media planning process.
Media buying refers to the action of purchasing ad space. In contrast, media planning includes all the steps for developing a strategy and implementing media use for a specific campaign. If your marketing team buys media space without detailed media planning, you’re likely leaving leads and conversions on the table and sacrificing your ROI.
The two go hand in hand. Detailed media planning leads to effective media buying. You’ll get the most out of your media purchasing power with a robust plan. That’s why organizations often work with a media team to craft an intentional plan for their media spaces.
Types of Media Planning Channels
When working within finite funds or resources, you’ve got to be picky about which media channels you invest your time and money into. From paid media to more organic marketing tactics, your chosen channels can make or break your marketing campaign.
The number of media channels available can be overwhelming. In general, channels fall into two categories: paid media and organic media. Here’s a list of the various types of channels to consider in your media planning, as well as the benefits we’ve found with each one:
Paid Media
Paid media often constitutes the bulk of your media plan due to the additional financial investment involved. A well-researched and strategic approach is crucial to ensure your resources are allocated efficiently and effectively.
Programmatic advertising uses algorithms to target specific audiences across various digital platforms. For instance, Airbnb leverages user behaviour and search history to display tailored advertisements. As a result, people who are more likely to book a stay see ads for the places they’re already researching. This method can be costly, but it provides a streamlined path to reach the individuals most likely to convert, maximizing your ROI.
Pay-per-click advertising allows you to pay only when users click on your search ads and social ads, providing cost-effective targeting and measurable results. This is what happens when you click on a sponsored result on a search engine.
Television advertising, including ads on streaming services, remains a prominent paid media channel. It offers wide reach and the opportunity to captivate audiences through audiovisual storytelling. What’s more, streaming services provide more targeted options, so you can reach specific segments of your audience.
Radio advertising is another effective paid media channel, often complementing other forms of media to enhance campaign effectiveness. It offers a lower cost than television and can be strategically paired with other channels to reinforce your messaging and increase brand visibility.
Print advertising, while less popular than it once was, presents a unique advantage. Ads within publications often encounter less resistance from the audience, given the targeted nature of the readership
Out-of-home (OOH) channels such as billboards and posters, offer opportunities for high-impact, creative visual advertising in physical spaces.
Digital Out-of-home (DOOH) channels such as retail locations, buses, transit hubs, airports, elevators, and mall directories, opens up a plethora of digital placements.
Organic Media
Unpaid media channels, also known as owned or earned media, offer organic marketing opportunities with relatively lower costs than paid advertising. The two main types of owned media channels are social media and digital publications.
Social media platforms allow you to run your own accounts and target specific audiences with comparatively low startup costs.
Digital publications, such as blogs and email newsletters, provide direct tracking of conversion rates.
Earned media is the attention your business gets from reviews or media coverage. This type of media builds trust with your audience. You can reuse content from this category to inspire other paid or organic marketing campaigns.
Leveraging these channels in your media planning can enhance your brand’s visibility, engagement, and measurement of campaign success.
Steps in the Media Planning Process
No matter what type of media you choose, the goal remains the same: to optimize your company’s messaging across various channels. The media planning process encompasses a series of strategic steps aimed at achieving this objective:
Researching your target audience and conducting market analysis
Setting goals and choosing key performance indicators (KPIs)
Continuously evaluating the campaign’s performance
In this section, we’ll provide insights into our process, starting with research and strategy formulation. We’ll also walk through goal setting, media plan implementation, and the ongoing process of analysis and refinement.
Conduct Audience Research
Conducting thorough target audience research is an essential step in the media planning process. From a brand development perspective, you should already have clear buyer personas that represent your target audience. However, understanding their demographics alone isn’t always enough.
To effectively plan your approach, you need to gain intimate knowledge of how your audience engages with various media channels. This requires studying existing data on your target audience’s media habits.
At Alphabet® Creative, our research includes examining which media outlets align with both the client’s goals and their audiences’ behaviours. We gather media kits and rate cards from each outlet and carefully analyze their suitability. Considering these specifics is vital in shaping a successful media strategy.
Formulate the Media Strategy
Developing a well-crafted media strategy is crucial for achieving optimal results in your marketing efforts. One of the key aspects of this strategy is selecting harmonious channels that work in synergy rather than duplicating efforts.
Instead of aiming for the same goal with multiple channels, it’s more effective to choose complementary channels that cater to different segments of your audience. For instance, if your product appeals to both casual and professional audiences, consider utilizing platforms like TikTok for a more casual approach and LinkedIn for a professional one.
It’s also beneficial to combine different types of media to create a cohesive experience. For example, pairing short-form videos with in-depth blog content allows for cross-referencing and engagement between the two mediums.
Crafting a media strategy typically involves three steps:
1. Consider Your Timeline
Determining the timeline for your media strategy depends on several factors, such as the nature of your offering, specific messaging goals, target audience behaviour, and budget constraints.
Consider the times of day when your audience is most active on each platform and schedule your posts accordingly to maximize visibility and engagement. Taking a broader perspective, start with the end goal in mind and work backward, identifying major touchpoints along the way that need to be addressed.
2. Understand Budget Limitations
Consulting with your leadership is essential to establish a realistic budget for your media plan. By involving decision-makers early on, you can ensure your plan aligns with available resources and avoids overambitious or inadequate planning.
3. Create a Media Plan Brief
Create a media plan brief to provide clear guidance and align all members of the marketing and media teams. This document should outline an overview of your media strategy, targeting criteria, chosen channels, communication tactics for each channel, and a timeline for implementing and reporting on your plan.
There’s no need to have every word of content pre-written, but the brief should establish the desired tone and arc of your content plan. By doing so, you can ensure every action you take executing your media plan is directionally cohesive, resulting in a more memorable, impactful campaign.
Determining Goals and KPIs
Outlining clear goals and KPIs is a vital step in developing a successful media strategy. KPIs are measurable metrics that help assess the effectiveness and performance of your media campaigns. They play a crucial role in media planning as they provide valuable insights and help fine-tune various aspects of your campaign – even down to the colour palette. Common KPIs include:
Reach
Your media campaign’s reach measures the number of people who see your marketing message as a percentage of the intended audience. This helps gauge the overall exposure of your campaign and its potential impact.
Frequency is another KPI that indicates how many times each individual will be exposed to your campaign. It helps determine the level of repetition needed to achieve your desired outcomes.
Continuity
Continuity, or scheduling frequency, is another factor to consider when setting goals. It refers to whether your advertising will be continuous, pulsing, or flighting.
Continuous frequency is suitable for products or services that require ongoing reinforcement, while flighting involves running a campaign, pausing, and then resuming it after a hiatus. This approach is beneficial for limited budgets or seasonal offerings. Pulsing combines elements of both approaches.
Engagement
Engagement KPIs are metrics used to measure audience interaction and involvement with media campaigns. These metrics provide insights into how effective your content is at driving meaningful engagement, brand affinity, and desired actions.
By monitoring engagement KPIs, marketers can optimize campaigns for higher interaction, audience satisfaction, and overall campaign performance. Examples of engagement KPIs include:
Cost per acquisition (CPA)
Conversion rate
Click-through rate (CTR)
Engagement rate (likes, comments, shares)
Average engagement time and bounce rate
Customer feedback
Budget
Cost-related KPIs are also essential considerations. When establishing your budget, you can track two KPIs: Cost Per 1,000 Impressions (CPM) and Cost Per Click (CPC). These metrics help you evaluate the cost-effectiveness of your media campaigns and optimize your resource allocation.
Specificity
It’s crucial to be specific with each goal and KPI. Instead of a vague objective like “achieving a positive ROI,” you could set a certain percentage goal. For example, you might aim for an ROI of 800% with a $5,000 budget, which translates to creating $40,000 worth of sales. Our approach typically uses SMART goals (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound).
Time Frame
In addition to defining goals and KPIs, it’s important to set a specific time frame for your campaign. This allows you to track progress and determine when to make adjustments or revamp your approach. Regular check-ins on each KPI during the campaign provide insights into whether you’re falling behind or exceeding expectations. Based on these assessments, you can consider tweaking your strategy to ensure optimal results.
By setting clear goals and identifying relevant KPIs, you can measure the effectiveness of your media campaigns, make data-driven decisions, and continuously optimize your approach for maximum impact and ROI.
Media Plan Implementation
When it comes to implementing your media plan, don’t just set it and forget it. You must also negotiate and buy ad space, create compelling content and design, and continuously monitor performance. This last step is especially critical.
At Alphabet®, implementation won’t start until everyone is on board. It’s essential to obtain client approval for the media strategy plan, ensuring universal buy-in. Once the green light is given, it’s time to set the wheels in motion. This includes:
Buying media space is like a strategic dance, where you search for the perfect media outlets that resonate with your target audience and campaign goals. Negotiations come into play as you aim to secure favourable rates and placements that fit within your budget. It’s all about finding that sweet spot where your message reaches the right people at the right time.
Building strong relationships with media vendors is key, as it can open doors to better rates and prime ad placements. With effective media buying, you can increase the chances of your messaging having a lasting impact on your audience.
Strengthen Your Organic Media Presence
In addition to buying ad space, your team needs to have a comprehensive understanding of self-serve platforms for your owned media content. This knowledge empowers your team to effectively manage and optimize the performance of your owned media channels – social media accounts, email newsletter, blog, etc.
Budget Transparency
Creating a detailed budget breakdown is another crucial step in implementing a media plan. It allows you to track and account for every penny of your media budget, including data overlay, platform fees, ad serving, ad verification, optimization, creativity, and agency compensation.
Maintaining transparency in your budget also ensures clear visibility into expenditures and enables better tracking of success metrics and analytics.
Prepare Logistics for Your Creative Team
Paying attention to ad specifications is important as well. While detailed specifications may not be needed in the initial planning stage, having this information on hand will help you avoid playing catch-up when it’s time to post an ad or content.
Proper planning of ad specifications, including size, file formats, and other technical details supports the creative team and minimizes inefficiencies.
Be Adaptable
While media planning sets the foundation for success, it’s also important to monitor KPIs along the way and be willing to make strategic adjustments if necessary. Remaining flexible and adaptable allows for course corrections that can significantly impact your campaign’s outcomes.
By being proactive, monitoring KPIs, and embracing flexibility, your campaign stands a better chance of maximizing ROI, achieving goals, and running smoothly. What’s more, continuous optimization and adjustment ensure your media strategy remains effective in a rapidly evolving marketing landscape.
Measuring Success and Reporting
Measuring the success of your media campaigns is essential for evaluating their effectiveness and making informed decisions for future campaigns. Continuously tracking KPIs provides valuable insights into your achievements and helps identify areas for improvement in future media planning.
Whether it’s daily, weekly, or monthly, regularly reviewing these numbers allows you to gauge campaign performance and understand the factors contributing to success or challenges. However, analyzing media data goes beyond just examining numbers; it involves extracting meaningful insights and using them to optimize future campaigns.
By identifying patterns, trends, and correlations in the data, you can gain valuable knowledge about audience behaviour, preferences, and the performance of different media channels. This information enables you to make data-driven decisions, refine targeting strategies, and allocate resources more effectively.
When reporting media performance to stakeholders, present the data clearly and concisely. Focus on key metrics that align with the campaign objectives and provide meaningful insights. Visual aids like graphs, charts, and infographics can enhance understanding and facilitate communication. In addition, provide actionable recommendations based on the data analysis, highlighting areas for improvement and strategies for future success.
Remember, analyzing media data is an ongoing process, helping you adapt your strategies, experiment with new approaches, and drive better results.
Nail Your Media Planning Strategy With AlphabetⓇ
When you realize the potential of media planning, you get better at generating leads, improving your brand image, and building lasting relationships with your audiences. By knowing what strategies to use and when to use them, an impactful marketing campaign is the result.
At AlphabetⓇ Creative, we understand the ingredients that make each brand stand out. We’re ready to put our brand development expertise to work for your organization. Contact us today to uncover the truth of your brand, so you can then integrate, execute, and live that truth throughout your entire organization.
As humans, emotional reactions influence almost every decision we make. If something feels comfortable, inspirational, or exciting, we’ll naturally lean in. But if something stirs negative emotions like anger, fear, or confusion, it can create a tunnel vision effect, closing our minds.
Emotion plays a significant role in decision-making, and understanding the science behind this can help shape effective brand strategies. Here, we’ll dive into that science – along with some tips for creating an authentic and emotionally clued-in brand that resonates with your audiences.
The Science of Emotional Decision-Making
At first glance, you may question the value of emotional decision-making when building a brand strategy. So for the logic lovers among us, here’s some of the science to back up our claims.
Emotions Empower Logic
Solid, logical numbers might seem like a better way to influence your audience – “Your donation provides 50 meals,” “Save 20% on this experience.” Emotions are subjective, whereas it’s tough to argue with cold, hard facts.
However, emotion and logic aren’t in conflict; they actually go hand-in-hand. Most people use logic to justify their actions, but they actually act emotionally. It’s like booking a fancy (and costly) AirBnb. You might justify the decision based on the positive user reviews, but deep down, you probably booked it to fulfill a sense of escapism, or a status fantasy, if only temporarily.
A study from Psychology Today revealed the connection between rational and emotional intelligence: people who perform better on intelligence tests are also better at using emotional information in decision-making. By leveraging branding to tap into people’s emotions, brands can create lasting connections and influence their decision-making process.
These lasting connections all start with attention. The philosopher and psychologist William James famously said, “what holds attention determines action.” When considering emotional decision-making in your brand strategy, think about how to hold your target audience’s attention. You can do this with what you say, how you say it, and what your brand looks like.
Creating Authentic Branding
Today’s savvy consumers can tell when you just want to close a deal – and they can spot snake oil a mile away. So it’s crucial that your branding stays true to who you are and what you stand for as an organization. When your marketing and communications come from a place of genuine authenticity, you’ll see your audiences respond with emotional decision-making.
Tapping into people’s emotions can make them feel vulnerable. If people perceive any hint of phoniness, they’ll feel taken advantage of and stop interacting with your brand. By staying consistent with your brand identity, you can appeal to people’s emotions and remain authentic at the same time. Here’s how:
Show a commitment to your core values and brand pillars. Find the areas where you share values with your target audience to convey sincerity. This consistency should extend to the style, tone, and behaviours that make up your brand identity.
Your brand identity encompasses the human personality traits a brand adopts, such as the happy-go-lucky, refreshing optimism of Coca-Cola or the rugged and rebellious image of Harley Davidson. Develop social media guidelines and design templates to maintain a consistent brand image without starting from scratch every time you publish new content.
Cultivate authenticity through experiences. Brand activations like events or conferences, guerilla marketing tactics, and other unconventional methods can provide brand exposure and connect your brand with positive experiences.
Creating an authentic brand is vital in today’s consumer-centric market. By staying true to your core values, maintaining consistency, and providing meaningful experiences, you can establish an authentic brand that resonates with your audience, fosters long-term relationships, and drives emotional decision-making.
Emotional Decision-Making in Your Branding Strategy
Clearly, emotions and trust influence buying patterns. But how do you apply this emotional decision-making approach to your branding strategy? By understanding how emotions influence behaviour, you can strategically tap into these emotions to create meaningful connections with your audience.
Use these tips to integrate an emotional appeal into your brand strategy and build trust with the right people:
Get to know your audience segments. You’ll want to know the demographic characteristics of your stakeholders as well as their behavioural patterns. What type of language do they use? What’s important to them? Understanding these deeper desires can help you create a brand identity that resonates.
Use Visuals. Visuals play a powerful role in capturing attention; people process visuals 60,000 times faster than they process text. So, as soon as people see the colours and design elements of your brand, they make subconscious decisions and assumptions about your company. Beyond the visuals, ensure your content and offerings reinforce the same themes.
Create community. People love to feel like they’re part of something bigger. By using your tone, user-generated content, and social media interactions, you can foster a sense of community among your customers. When consumers see how your brand has positively impacted other people’s lives, they’ll envision how it will change theirs too. This appeals to people’s emotional need to be included.
Building these emotional connections takes time. As an organization, view your branding in terms of the relationships you have with your audiences. Appealing to their emotions involves reinforcing positive memories and continually strengthening the emotional bond.
For more on emotional decision-making, check out Episode 7 of our podcast, Flipping Over Rocks.
Work With the Experts in Emotional Branding
Developing a brand strategy that encourages emotional decision-making lets you connect with your audience on a deeper level. It’s critical to understand their emotions, craft authentic messaging, utilize visuals and storytelling, foster engagement, and maintain consistency. Then, you can create a brand that resonates, inspires, and drives lasting emotional connections with your customers.
How do you create a brand that pushes the right emotional buttons? Connect with AlphabetⓇ to uncover your brand identity. We take a holistic approach to brand development to help you build an authentic brand identity that moves your audiences both logically and emotionally.
Contact Alphabet Creative today to uncover the truth of your brand, then integrate, execute, and live that truth throughout your entire organization.
Human beings are inherently nimble, whether we know it or not. Every day, each of us makes a number of adjustments to how we go about our lives: a road closes for construction, so we take another route; a product goes out of stock, so we try an alternative; a friend needs support, so we cancel our plans.
For the most part, we’re experts at shifting gears, sometimes subconsciously, so why does it feel so taxing in the business world?
Not to sound like a broken record, but we know what organizations are capable of in the face of change. COVID-19, as an obvious example, put a fire under businesses everywhere. The flexible found a way to survive. Others, unfortunately (and for a number of reasons), didn’t. It was a rude awakening.
Still, even hardened by the anomaly of a global pandemic, it can feel difficult at times to adapt to new circumstances. Let’s look at what brands need to consider to master the art of the shift.
Expect the unexpected
Change is constant. It’s relentless. It’s intimidating.
Consider the technologies we use daily – the apps, platforms, and systems under constant refinement to make our lives easier. Every update offers a faster, smarter, and generally betteruser experience, but with so much evolution, it can be hard to keep up with the latest and greatest, especially when it comes to new products or services.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a great example. From enterprise data systems to Photoshop plugins to the large language models expediting content creation, AI applications are suddenly abundant; in fact, the global AI market, currently valued at $100 billion USD, is expected to grow twentyfold by 2030.
The business potential for these applications is huge, but there’s a steep learning curve around AI and data literacy. And with the technologies evolving at a breakneck pace, we’ve only just scratched the surface of the machinal revolution. Who knows what’s next?
All this to say, we need to get comfortable with change, as difficult as it may be, and define strategies to change with it – because, as we all know, technology isn’t the only culprit capable of throwing a curveball. There are many reasons why your organization might need to restrategize:
the market changes, and your messaging no longer resonates;
your team’s productivity software isn’t producing a good return;
a crisis occurs, and you need to communicate with stakeholders.
Whatever the case, as a marketer or brand manager, you’re likely to experience some degree of surprise almost every day. Being at peace with this reality can help you better manage uncertainty, which can make you that much better at pivoting.
Assess the urgency
If you want to be good at being adaptive, you need to be systematic. Start by asking yourself: how urgent is the issue?
Say you just launched a Facebook campaign only to learn that your target market is spending more time on TikTok. In this case, you’d want to course correct quickly to avoid hemorrhaging your media spend.
Now, imagine you drafted a new content strategy. You’re planning on doing video content, but new research shows that podcasts also resonate with your audience. You have an opportunity to pivot and diversify your media, but you also have time to think it through since you haven’t gone to market yet.
The bottom line is that when it comes to shifting directions, start by gauging the urgency around the decision. Do you need to act today, or do you have time to be more methodical? Is this healthy stress or stress stress?
Be decisive
When faced with a circumstance beyond your organization’s control, even a prediction, it never pays to be passive. It’s too easy to fall into a state of inertia and go about your business as usual, expecting the same results. You need to act quickly and decisively based on the knowledge at hand.
If you notice something trending, whether it’s a market change or otherwise, consider its potential impact on your business and set a deliberate plan of action.
This was recently the case for our client Minto Communities Ottawa. As the housing market heated up during the pandemic, the company noticed a shift in buyer behaviour: whereas location used to be a primary decision driver, consumers were now considering buying a home anywhere in the city. Knowing the market wasn’t likely to cool anytime soon, we worked with Minto to quickly evolve its messaging and go-to-market approach.
By emphasizing the brand promise then funneling users to discover the locations where they could live that promise, we helped Minto make a calculated move during a tough time for business. It was a subtle but intentional switch.
Collaborate to recalibrate
When you need to be nimble as a marketer, nothing’s more valuable than collaboration.
Tourism marketing, for example, has always required an element of collaboration to adapt to new market conditions and traveler expectations. This was definitely the case during COVID-19, but even post-pandemic we’re still seeing strong, continued collaboration among destination marketing organizations (DMOs), industry partners, and local communities.
This is especially true of Tourism Kingston, a DMO that knows travelers aren’t just motivated by a destination’s attractions; they want to experience the culture of a place. So, part of a strong destination development strategy is to celebrate a destination’s people, involve them in your marketing, and, ultimately, galvanize pride in a place, which creates a strong economic ripple.
In this respect, Tourism Kingston offers a case study in shifting your mindset. How can your brand be more human? How can you pivot your marketing to create a more emotional response? How can you tell stories that connect with people?
Here’s an example of that mindset shift in action: a recent video for Tourism Kingston, an authentic collaboration with poet Armand Garnet Ruffo and videographers Untold Storytelling, all from Kingston.
In conclusion
Change stops for no one, and while not every situation requires a shift of COVID proportions, being comfortable pivoting will always be pivotal to your success. Learning to assess the urgency, be intentional with your decision-making, and lean on collaboration can help you get the best results.
Struggling with a circumstance that impacts your brand? Try running a group brainstorm or thinking inside the box. Better yet, contact Alphabet®. With more than 20 years’ experience helping destinations, associations, and non-profit organizations push through change, we can help your organization do the same – and even get ahead of it.
These days, it’s no longer enough to provide a quality product, service, or solution. Your audience needs to trust you – and trust is in short supply.
In fact, brand trust hit an all-time low at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and organizations are still reeling from the fallout: 75% of executives admit to having a harder time building and maintaining trust among their audiences. That’s why building brand perception is more important than ever.
By targeting perception as part of your brand promotion initiatives, you can create deeper connections with your audiences and earn their trust and loyalty. Use these branding tips and strategies to get started.
What Is Brand Perception?
Brand perception is the collective opinions and emotions people hold toward a brand. This is often shaped by the organization’s reputation and audience interactions, among other factors. Organizations measure brand perception using a few methods:
Surveys: Conducting a quarterly brand perception survey can give you an idea of what your audiences think of your brand. These surveys often use metrics like a net promoter score (NPS) to quantify perception data and give you actionable insights.
Forums: Analyze online forums and message boards to get qualitative data on brand perception. This lets you see what your audiences are saying about your brand. It can also be instrumental in determining pain points you need to address or processes you can improve.
Social Media Monitoring: Through social listening and monitoring tools, you can keep tabs on social media comments, news mentions, and similar audience sentiment.
Positive brand perception is critical to building trust and credibility in today’s highly competitive market. It helps your brand become more recognizable through both visual elements like brand design and the values your organization stands for. In the long run, this can help you improve your brand reputation and reinforce your trustworthiness.
What Is Brand Credibility?
Brand credibility refers to the believability of a company’s brand message. It’s the level of confidence people have in a brand to deliver on its value proposition. Many elements drive brand credibility, including:
Expertise: You wouldn’t approach a brand that seems incapable of assisting with your specific needs. Position your brand as an expert in the field by demonstrating your industry knowledge. For instance, publish thought leadership content online.
Transparency: Be candid about your organizational practices, from your operations to your culture. Your audience will feel more connected to your brand, driving trust and loyalty.
Consistency: Articulate your brand message as consistently as possible. Using too many variations in brand design and brand voice can confuse people and make it more difficult for them to recognize your organization and build trust.
Why It’s Important to Prove Your Brand Message
Audiences don’t take kindly to empty words. So, as polished as your brand message may be, it will only serve its purpose in boosting brand perception, trust, and credibility if you can follow through with it; in fact, a 2021 survey showed that 88% of people rate trust as critical when choosing a brand, while 84% said the same about good brand reputation.
With these stats in mind, provide proof of your brand message to establish the legitimacy of your claims. For example, if you position your technology as a life-changing healthcare solution, you’ll want to back that up with definitive science or research. Adopt this proof mindset as you build out your brand messaging framework.
Brand Authenticity: Walk the Walk
We all know actions speak louder than words. Demonstrate your brand messaging not only in ads and marketing campaigns but also in practice.
Perhaps one of the most popular examples of this is Dove Soap. Staying true to its mission to “redefine beauty standards,” the brand launched Dove Real Beauty in 2004 to promote the body positivity movement. The brand campaign featured stories of how real women struggled with impossible beauty standards.
Remember, audiences trust brands that share their beliefs and values. Here are some brand strategy considerations and tips that can help you walk the walk and build a trustworthy brand:
Deliver on promises: Give your audiences experiences that meet or exceed their expectations to establish a positive brand perception.
Be transparent: 74% of people crave transparency from brands. Be honest about your pricing and how you conduct business.
Position your brand as a thought leader: Establish credibility by sharing industry knowledge through content marketing, participating in speaking engagements, and publishing valuable insights.
Collaborate with like-minded people: Align yourself with organizations or fellow companies that echo your brand values.
Foster a Brand Consumers Trust
Building a successful brand takes more than an eye-catching logo design and clever advertisements. An organization must develop an identity, foster brand perception, and deliver on its brand promise to earn the trust of its target audiences. By walking the walk, you can reinforce your organization’s credibility and secure solid brand positioning in the long run.
However, with the many elements involved in the process, building positive brand perception can be overwhelming. This is where Alphabet® Creative comes in. We offer a variety of brand development solutions that help brands discover their identities and communicate their purpose. Let us do the same for your organization.
Contact Alphabet® today to uncover the truth of your brand and then integrate, execute, and live that truth throughout your entire organization.
