This post is based on a talk I gave at our SearchLove conference in Boston last week. It ties quite closely with the post my colleague Ron Garrett wrote last week: Search Marketers Need to Evolve. You can probably tell we've been doing a lot of thinking about this.
When I gave this talk at SearchLove, I hoped that it would put in context why we bring such a range of speakers and topics together at our conferences and to inspire the attendees to go back to their companies and make real changes. I hope this post will do the same for you.
Photo by Zwickerhill Photography
As digital marketers, our focus on analytics has served us well in driving direct, measurable sales. The dominant form of brand marketing, however, has remained offline with TV taking the lion's share of the budget and attention. We believe that as TV faces disruptive technology and business models, digital marketers have an opportunity to grow their influence and impact. In total, this is an opportunity worth tens of billions of dollars a year.
I'd very much like for us—our industry—you and me—to be the ones who benefit.
Despite all the growth we have seen in digital marketing spend, I think that we are only just entering what I'm calling the golden age of digital.
Building brands online first
We're entering the age when the biggest brands in the world will be built online first. I hope to convince you of two things: first, that this change is happening right now. And second, that we are the people to win in this world.
Starting at the beginning
There are some confident statements above, but the last few years have had their share of introspection and crises of confidence. We've put a lot of time and energy over the years into understanding the direction marketing is moving and capitalising on the shifts. Duncan and I originally started by thinking that networked computing was going to be a big deal and then started our company initially on the back of a simple CMS that we built to help small business owners take advantage of the self-publishing revolution.
Photo by Zwickerhill Photography
As we shifted gears to focus more on the dominance of the search channel, we started trying to understand where Google in particular might be taking things.
We've written plenty about that over the years, but we were talking about effects similar to Panda, Penguin, and Hummingbird years before they actually came to pass. Panda and Penguin started making our vision come true. We were more effective search marketers than we'd ever been because we'd largely bypassed building the infrastructure for search as it was and tried to build it for how search would be.
And yet something was wrong.
Powerful content was becoming ever more effective. And yet the greatest examples of content that we were seeing at search conferences weren't built by SEO agencies.
Brands were getting a bigger and bigger advantage in search. And yet the best brand builders weren't SEO agencies.
For a long time, we've talked about how "SEO" isn't a verb. You don't "SEO a website." Ranking well is an outcome, not an activity. It's like fame. "Famous" isn't a verb. You don't "famous someone." You get famous for doing other things (playing sport, performing music, appearing on TV). SEO is the same.
But what if we weren't the right people to do those things for people? What if we weren't the world's best PR firm, branding agency, or creative producers?
Don't worry. I got over my insecurity. I believe the capabilities that we have been building are going to grow in power and influence. Here's how:
The Innovator's Dilemma
It was Mark Suster who kick-started my confidence with his talk in San Diego [use this link and sign up for an account to get access to the video for free]. He's an entrepreneur-turned-investor. He's smart and opinionated.
He talked about maker studios at our conference. You might have heard a few weeks ago that Maker Studios sold to Disney for half a billion dollars.
Maker is a producer and distributor of online video. The turning point for me was in realising that the forces they were betting on were also rampaging towards our quirky, exciting, geeky little corner of the marketing world.
There's a book called The Innovator's Dilemma by a Harvard Business School professor named Clayton Christensen. It's a little dry, but if you're interested in business theory and technology, it's an absolute no-brainer: You should read it.
It describes two kinds of innovations that hit established markets. So-called "sustaining innovations" make existing processes faster, cheaper, or better. They can be very dramatic, but Professor Christensen's research shows that they almost always end up benefiting the incumbent players in the market.
In contrast to "sustaining innovations" stand "disruptive innovations," which are those that attack problems an entirely different way. They typically don't work as well as the existing solutions, perhaps solving only part of the problem, but have a structurally different cost. So they're "cheaper but worse."
Cheaper but worse
Doesn't sound too compelling, does it?
That's what the incumbents think. They may spot a potential opportunity, and may even pay lip service to the idea that they should be pursuing it, but ultimately, their economic incentives are skewed towards maintenance of the status quo.
Therein lies the dilemma.
There's often a subset of the market, for whom the new service is "good enough." It may not be gold-plated, but it solves their immediate needs and they can afford it. As they invest, it gets better and better, capturing more and more of the market opportunity until it's meeting the core needs of even the top end of the market while still being structurally cheaper. Money cascades to the new entrant and leaves the incumbents high and dry.
Let's go back to the "cheaper but worse" innovation for a second. To me, that sounds an awful lot like the idea of building a brand online. Let's look at the details:
- The established way of building a brand for a generation has been via mass market TV advertising and other classic above-the-line spend. Spends of $100m+ are not uncommon.
- Building a brand online is cheaper, yes, but right now, not as effective.
- The incumbent brand-builders pay lip service to digital, but when you look at their corporate structure, their fee structures, and their economic incentives, and you realise that they'd far rather see TV get bigger than have to do all this messy web marketing.
So I think there is a disruption coming to brand marketing, and I don't think it's going to benefit the big guys.
Online first
I'm calling this whole phenomenon "online first": the biggest brands of tomorrow will be built online. This will be partly because the tools we have available to build brands online are going to get better and better, and partly because money is going to flow to digital from TV. I recently wrote about this in more detail in our Future of TV report:
I am definitely not saying that TV itself is in trouble. We live in an amazing time for TV content. You just have to look at shows like Breaking Bad, Walking Dead, and True Detective to see that we have exceptional content and more ways of accessing that content than ever before—and that's before we even get to Netflix and House of Cards. In part as a result of this resurgence, the total time spent watching video has increased every year recently.
Our devices are also getting better and better. The cost of big screens is coming down; we now have full HD on our mobile devices.
But the way we get our content is changing. 80% of US households have some form of internet-connected device paired with their TV according to gigaom research. Whether it's an Apple TV, Roku, Xbox, Chromecast or something else, we can increasingly watch anything we like on the big screen. And conversely, we can watch more and more of our "classic TV" content on smartphones, tablets, laptops and any other screen we can lay our hands on.
This particular part of the trend has been analysed to death. I'm not interested in that for the purposes of this analysis. I'm interested in the fragmenting viewership: In general, we're no longer all watching the same thing at the same time. That has profound impacts on the way TV advertising is bought and sold.
The innovator's dilemma predicts that the cost per unit of the high end of the old market will continue to rise even as the bottom starts to fall away. It's becoming ever more valuable to reach consumers on those rare occasions when we do all sit down at the same time to watch the same content.
The complexity of time-shifted internet-delivered content rapidly surpasses human optimisation ability. The upfront media market in which Oprah stands on stage and extols her show and the network and seeks tens or hundreds of millions of dollars of spend is a process which can't survive the move to digital-scale complexity (if you're interested in this, I wrote an introduction to TV advertising a few weeks ago).
Advertising against TV-like content will have to be bought more like AdWords. It has to become real-time (depending on who's actually watching at a given moment), it'll have to be market-priced in one form or another (because you can't negotiate all these things individually on the fly).
I'm in danger of getting dragged into deep economic arguments, but the effect of all this disruption is going to be a whole load of unbundling and a reallocation of budgets.
Editor's note: The PDF below is no longer available.
Of course, in part, this will open up opportunities in video marketing—both in brand-funded TV-like content and in video advertising against internet-delivered video (check out the talk by Chris from Wistia's [PDF]). I don't think it's a given that the incumbent TV advertisers will dominate that space. It's structurally pretty different. We are certainly betting in this area—between Phil and Margarita, we're already doing video strategy and execution for ourselves and our clients.
It's not all about video, though.
How our industry competes
There are three broad areas that we all need to get great at to take advantage of this opportunity. Video fits into the first of these, which is technical creativity—that place where technology and storytelling meet:
1. Technical creativity
I've been endlessly frustrated over the years by the creative storytellers who misunderstand (or don't even care about) technology. The stupid apps that no one uses. The branded social networks that nobody joins. The above-the-line campaigns telling you to search for phrases they don't rank for.
Old-school SEOs can spot crawl issues or indexing problems in their sleep. We've had to get good at things like analytics, UX, and conversion. Indeed, one of the most popular talks last week (and Slideshare of the day) was from Aaron Weyenberg at TED, and was all about UX. The things that stood out to me the most were all about the different ways they listened to their audience and gathered feedback at different stages of the process. This incorporated everything from the standard hall-way tests through qualitative and quantitative surveying to a really nicely-executed beta. You can see the full deck here:
And we mustn't lose sight of the value of that technical knowledge. Screw up a migration and you're just as hosed as you've ever been.
For me personally, the creative is the more challenging part—but luckily it's not all about me. We've been investing in creative for a while, and I loved the presentation our head of creative, Mark Johnstone gave last week entitled how to produce better content ideas. It really clarified my thinking in a few areas—particularly about the effort and research that should go in early in the process in order to give the "lightbulb moment" a chance. By coupling that with examples of deconstructing other people's creative (and showing us / giving us further reading on how to practice ourselves) he made a compelling argument that we can all do this so much better—and that not only designers can be "creative." I'm also looking forward to trying out the immersion techniques he talks about for getting from unstructured to structured. You can check out the full deck here:
How to Produce Better Content Ideas
[If you'd like to see more of the decks from Boston, you can currently get them here and in the next few weeks the videos will be available within DistilledU]
2. Broad promotional ability
The second capability we need after technical creativity is a broad promotional ability. This is your classic owned, earned and paid media.
As search marketers, we've typically focused primarily on the earned side of this—via outreach and digital PR—and my colleague Rob Toledo gave a great presentation about some of the cleverer forms of earned media in his presentation The Hunter/Gatherer. He talked in detail about ways of reaching that tricky kind of influencer—the one who wants to discover their own interesting share-worthy material. It was a funny presentation that contained some exceptional tactics. You can see the full deck here:
I think paid media is going to have an ever-increasing part to play in online brand building though. Pay Per Click is typically measured on direct response metrics—sending traffic to landing pages and converting them—but social and video advertising is on the rise. We increasingly spend money on promoting content instead of promoting landing pages. I expect that trend to continue.
The eagle-eyed among you might have noticed that this isn't inbound. I make no apology for that.
3. Influence and measurement throughout the Customer Lifecycle
Finally, alongside our technical creativity and promotional ability, we need to double down on our ability to influence and measure customer behaviour throughout the customer lifecycle.
We've all heard (or even been) the search experts who stand on stage and talk about the measurability of digital. Sometimes they go further and make off-hand comments about how you "can't measure TV."
Does anyone really believe that? Anyone think Proctor & Gamble or Unilever really waste half the money they spend?
One of the most mind-blowing talks I ever attended was at ad:tech a few years ago—it was a speaker from Ogilvy talking about the econometric models they use to measure their work for P&G. It was all about how they were tying together the influence of point-of-sale, coupon codes, TV, and other above-the-line advertising to understand what's making them the money. They are good at it but it's expensive. Our industry's stuff is cheap in comparison. It's not yet good enough but if we work hard and invest, it can be.
What I didn't say
Remember: I didn't say TV is dead. I didn't say search is dead. I said that our crazy blend of technical creativity, promotional chops and measurement skills is going to be the skillset that builds tomorrow's biggest brands. AND—crucially to the topic near and dear to much of the Moz audience's hearts, it's also going to be how you rank in Google.
Advertising is a half-trillion dollar a year industry struggling to understand its place in a digital world. I don't want the same old guys to win on our turf. The internet is our domain. Let's go get great at this.
Will - I'm mostly sold on your thesis and on the shift of brand advertising dollars. The only big gap I felt reading your piece was the idea that Television was a primary place where brands were built. I think that, in large part, consumer brands are primarily built through their products, distribution, and physical presence, and secondarily through media (TV, radio, print, billboards, etc). There are even a lot of consumer brands that didn't do TV (Google was an obvious example in recent years and until recently, but before them, I think it was 3M that famously avoided a lot of media for decades). Being on store shelves, on main streets, in malls, and where people went to buy had and has a major impact, too. And I like to think of organic/inbound web marketing as filling a lot of that on the web (vs paid web media, which functions and is controllable more like paid offline media).
I think this distinction is definitely worth drawing. You can develop a brand through differentiation in both style and substance. Google & 3M had very innovative products. In heavily commodotised markets (e.g. soap powder, deodorant), there is often not a whole lot to distinguish between the products, and a perceptual differentiation can be a strong way to go, hence why P&G and Unilever invest so heavily in TV advertising. They do, however, also invest a lot in R&D.
Yeah, branding should always begin with product, but as far as marketing goes, digital is going to replace things like TV, radio, print, billboards, etc. Those things may still exist, but the ubiquity of the web will make it the primary marketing channel.
A few years ago the web was confined to your desk. Now it's in your pocket, in your car, on your wrist, maybe even on your face (Google Glass/Oculus). Where the people are, that's where the marketing has to be, and increasingly that's the web.
While I second Rand in say that "consumer brands are primarily built through their products, distribution, and physical presence, and secondarily through media (TV, radio, print, billboards, etc)" I also wish to add a point here that from what I see is happening now is collaboration of Televisions and the internet. The kind of technology that we are heading to shows clearly that the TV's are soon going to the 'ALL IN ONE' devices with Social Media already on it and access to the internet. What would be interesting to see is how the brand marketing will change with this change in commercial media.
Don't want to sound too old school and with all due respect, 10 years ago and before, most brand was built through relationships. Good 'ol grass roots marketing had more organic shift based upon the public relations and personalities within - over any type of media or collateral effort. It was all of those ancillaries that delivered the message - but the home runs were made with hand shakes and smiles and good 'ol fashioned trust. It's much harder to garner that trust through a website regardless of social media because real trust takes time while likes and links simply focus on quantity more than quality 9 times out of 10.
Mark Johnstone's slide deck was brilliant. Love the idea generation field.
Seconded, it's well worth a read.
This is for the first time I heard about this type of excellent conference. I would love to say congrats to all the attendants and those reading this article. Because it is very much helpful for all the moz members.
This is What We Need for 2014 Market, Each Every Slide Above were just i opener we were just going in totally opposite direction in terms of marketing. Will Critchlow thank you for sharing this valuable contents in the blog and yes i am not thanking for the shake spamming as normal people post in the comment box of every blogs, - forget it come to your blog a lot things to learn from here and one thing is i definitely improve is our ppt creation techniques
online branding is a very great to digital marketing compaign. i love this idea
Well thought out theory Will! while reading it felt as if you were speaking directly to my team and I because it compliments the direction were heading which is working out very well for us. On top of that you added more vision to our business model. Thanks for sharing your insight Will!
All incredible resources in here. Mark Suster's talk and the 3 presentations. Will need more than one read to fully internalise this :)
Great article! I also find DBI's tips on how to build a brand with no money to be really useful: https://digitalbrandinginstitute.com/build-digital-brand-no-money/
Google will always give some priority to major brands. However with digital marketing campaign well defined, it is possible to reverse the trend. It's harder to do ... Thanks for this article!
This particular post is what bothers me a little about SEO. Obviously people are searching for "brand name" but you should be aware that people also search for "brand name scam" instead of "brand name" because they want to find out of there are legitimate concerns about "brand name" that they should be worried about. By scrubbing those results, it does a disservice to users who want a real, unbiased opinion and may turn some people away from the "brand name".
How do you guys polish this stuff ?
Obviously Digital and Internet marketing has a lot wider scope and with the aid of these channels, it would be more effective to represent the brand, values associated, testimonials, reviews that would be going to influence the customers better than what a 2 to 5 minutes TV ad can do.
Digital Marketing and Branding enables to get the brand associated directly with the people, encourages them to ask questions, give feedback, share experiences and that too spending minimal. According to me, Brands can have better exposure through the online media, though its only my personal experience.
Building your reputation online is similar to a networking breakfast, but it’s not as easy and it takes more time. First, it’s important to have a clearly defined strategy for reaching your audience. Next, you need to identify the tactics you’ll use in the process.
Thanx for the article Will, online branding should be your number 1 objective for any business. Yes, there are many things that you can do to spread the word. Obviously, follow Moz & Distilled recommendations of having a well plan marketing (digital&offline) program and track & measure your campaigns.
Online Brand Building is a really important part of a Digital Marketing Campaign. And its trend is increasing day by day. A lot of big brands that used to invest a lot more on TV, Radio advertisement now investing heavily in Digital advertising so that their customers can find them online and their brand awareness increase. So every marketer should start focusing on Brand Building for their Clients and companies online. If you analyze the 1st page of Google you will find all famous big Brands there such as Ebay and Amazon. This clearly shows the priority of Google to a famous Online Brand.
Lots of stuff to think about here. I'm not sure I agree with disruptive innovations being cheaper or of inferior quality. It seems to me the only way to create something that will last long-term is through disruption. And of course your competitors will hate that, so it's good, right?
I think you're also getting at something with the app producers making things no one wants. I'm reminded of large SEO budgets bringing in lots of traffic to a site with dull, or worse, no content. (Well, maybe placeholder text could be worse). Was that money well-spent?
Great article. It's unfortunate how many companies neglect brand building online. I understand the appeal of TV and radio ads, but digital marketing is powerful in a different way that should not be neglected.
Completely agree with you "that our crazy blend of technical creativity, promotional chops and measurement skills is going to be the skillset that builds tomorrow's biggest brands." Thanks for the encouragement. Awesome post!
Mark Suster's talk was incredible thanks for sharing it here...
Very informative. Thanks for all the links to great content. I agree that I don't think TV is dead, but I do think that NetFlix is going to have something to be said about how TV works in the future. What happens when you take the commercials out of tv and people watch 10 episodes of a show at a time. It takes advertising and turns it upside down. I think there is a lot of potential for NetFlix to start weaving advertising into their product without it being disruptive. And when that happens how we will respond.
Online Branding is part of pramotion of your product and it is increase your visibility in SERP'S.