This is the penultimate part of the series, and here I want to cover the area where there is more subjectivity and context involved than in the previous 3 marketing budgets. Rather than making it a long story, I have tried to answer some questions that cross our minds when we hear the word “brand marketing”.

What is a Brand?

The term brand refers to a business and marketing concept that helps people identify a particular company, product, or individual. Brands help shape people’s perceptions of companies, their products, or individuals. A brand is not limited to logo, color, etc. it also includes your customer service, advertising, designs, supply quality, etc. But Brand building is not limited to the above. Smart brands strive to convert every customer touch point into an opportunity for creating a positive influence on the minds of the customer.

Reference: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/brand.asp

Therefore any actions primarily done to enhance or change the brand image will be counted under Brand Marketing.

Example: Dominos launched a famous “30 Minute or Free Pizza” in the 2000s. Now while we can debate if it was a customer experience promise or a supply chain show of strength or a brand gimmick, at the end of it most of the users who were earlier skeptical of long wait times or unpredictable delivery experiences, at least gave it a try.

How do you measure the Performance of the Brand Marketing Budget?

The primary premise on which you start your performance analysis is – What is your Objective? If the activity you have in mind is hitting this objective, then you are having a good performance. So for example, if your loyal users don’t know that you also sell soap, then keeping a track of how many people are aware of the same (via a survey/feedback call), before and after the brand campaign can be a good enough measure of success.

How to compare the Performance of the Brand Budget vs the performance budget?

Short Answer: You Don’t.

If you want performance then run performance marketing or channels within that cohort, which are super aligned with those KPIs. Do not retrofit the principles of Performance Marketing for measurement of performance of the Brand Marketing Budget/Campaigns.

Can Brand Marketing help in Acquisitions?

Typically performance channels have a good performance but they offer limited reach for certain use cases. Even a popular category such as “Shampoo” has less than 2K Monthly searches. Now it is evident from the above table that if you were in the market to sell shampoo, then you would need to enhance your reach beyond the performance channels. In such a case the companies have to resort to

1. Merchandising at places where people show up for buying shampoo (example: Bigbasket or your Modern Retail)
2. Creating your own brand for the potential users who are currently not considering your brand when they buy from sources in 1
3. Note: Users in 1 may not be available on Performance Marketing Channels. At the same time Performance Marketing is not the best place to build a brand.

Typically Larger Media like TV, Print, Radio, etc offer far larger reach at a much cheaper cost when your scale is huge.

To conclude this, if say your sole reason for running brand marketing is to acquire more users then the only measure of success is the lift in Organic Acquisitions while the campaigns are running. Time series analysis with a defined attribution window is also undertaken to be more precise.

Are there any Objective ways to measure how one’s Brand is doing?

Some tools/markers that are usually used to see where the Brand is going?

1. Organic Brand Mentions on Social Media
2. Continuous Survey / Feedback from Users – How do they hear about you?
3. NPS Surveys about Brand Perception
4. Brand lift studies
5. Organic Traffic (although hard to distinguish from SEO Efforts)
6. Organic Conversions Improvement (outside of the Product attributed lifts)
7. Earned Media that comes in Organically

How long does it take for Brand Marketing to work?

Rather than using Brand Marketing as a blanket term, imagine it to be a continuous array of campaigns, with the same or different objectives. Typically you try and measure the success of the campaign wrt the Objective.

While there is no ‘one size fits all’, here is a basic guide to what should be a minimum period to run certain larger brand campaigns.

Big Bold TV Ad Campaigns	1 month
Celebrity Endorsements	6 months
Paid Sponsorships of the IPL, and other Events	Duration of the Event
Sponsorships of TV Shows	Duration of the Event
Influencer Marketing	1 month
Hoardings across the town	1 month
Radio Ads	1 month
Youtube Ads	1 month

What should be the Brand Marketing Budget for your Company?

For Brand Objectives

Usually for larger firms with significant revenue, <2% of the revenue is re-invested in brand-building initiatives and staying top of the mind of the users.

For smaller companies with a smaller revenue base, <2% may be too insignificant. At the same time while you are small, then Marketing Budgets 1, 2, and 3 are appropriate and will result in more uptick. It is not uncommon to see 10% of the total budget in 1, 2, and 3 put together being allocated for brand initiatives.

( Marketing Budget 1 – Acquisition Budget, Marketing Budget 2 – Discounting Budget, Marketing Budget 3 – CRM Budget)

For Acquisition Objectives

If you have a precedent for the impact of a brand campaign leading to acquisition, usually that is taken as a determinant for budget calculation. The rate-limiting factor in all such cases is, at what level of CAC would you be able to justify the Costs incurred on the overall campaign?

All the Marketing Budgets in a nutshell

There are broadly 4 categories of Marketing Budget, and here’s how you measure the effectiveness of each one of them

1. Acquisition Budget – Ability to acquire new users on the platform
2. Discounting Budget – Ability to improve revenue or conversion from a user
3. Activation / Engagement Budget – Ability to bring a user back to the platform and make them transact or engage
4. Brand Budget – Ability to solve a larger problem of Brand Perception or Acquire users when performance marketing has hit a ceiling.