Mia Fileman 0:05
Life's too short for crap marketing. The Got Marketing Podcast is for marketers, business owners and entrepreneurs who want marketing that's fun, accessible and meaningful. Join me, Mia Fileman for inspired chats with my favorite marketing insiders about marketing that works, campaigns that inspire and the fads, fakery and false prophets to avoid. Hello friends and welcome back to Got Marketing. Today we are going to debate brand versus performance marketing. And to have this conversation with me, I've invited Erin Stafford, the digital account director at Compass studio,
Erin Stafford 0:46
the brand marketing side is perceived to maybe not have as much of a direct impact on revenue. The debates at the moment around how do I split my budget between performance and brand marketing, I'm of the opinion that they can kind of work in tandem.
Mia Fileman 1:02
That was ERIN STAFFORD. Erin's been in agency land for the past seven years and has spent her time with Compass studio creating campaigns that amplify the impact of world bettering brands. Welcome to got marketing. Erin.
Erin Stafford 1:16
Hello, thank you for having me.
Mia Fileman 1:18
Thank you so much for coming on and having this very meaty discussion with me because it is a debate right brand versus performance marketing. How do we balance it? Which one do we start with? Do you need both? There's lots to unpack here.
Erin Stafford 1:33
There is and there's yeah, there's been a lot of discussion about this. I don't know if I've just had my ear out for it recently. But I've definitely seen this kind of pickup in my conversations with marketing managers, but also, I guess, in the broader community as well.
Mia Fileman 1:48
Well, a good place to start is perhaps if you could take us through your role at Compass studio, what does it look like? What is the day to day as a digital account director? Yeah, what do you do?
Erin Stafford 1:58
Yeah, absolutely. So compass studio, we are an agency that focuses on amplifying the impact of world bettering brands. So I'm very lucky in that I get to work with a lot of clients across a lot of different verticals. And the one thing that ties them together is that they have purpose or impact at their core, or they're trying and striving to, I guess, incorporate that a little bit more into their brand. So we do get to work on a lot of different types of campaigns, a lot of different types of companies. But my role is really directing the strategic, I guess, component of the digital department, making sure that all of the campaigns that we put out into the world, whether it be email marketing, a performance marketing campaign, an influencer marketing campaign, or anything else that kind of lives in the digital sphere, is going to achieve the goals that our clients may have, and make sure that it truly heroes the impact that they're having.
Mia Fileman 1:59
Amazing. you know what I really love about what compass Studio does is that, you know, as a marketer, where we can be torn with some of our clients, like if sugary cereal brand approaches us and they want to campaign it's, it's tough, like, do you do it for the money? Or do you say no, and be like, Look, it's just not something that I really want to be promoting. Whereas compass Studio, you it's like, it's all this, it is just for purpose brands, which is great, because you don't have to have that conflict about do you take this? You know, greasy real estate client that is building huge, massive high rises and promising views, but there's actually no view. And so yeah, I think that that's really, really noble and honorable.
Speaker 1 3:42
And it's pretty great to be able to, yeah, be proud of the client base that you work on. So I feel very lucky to be here. But it's also really good to be able to work with companies who are just starting out on the impact journey, recognizing that they do want to make a change, and perhaps have got a sustainability strategy in place or something that now they want to kind of include in their marketing efforts as well, which is really exciting to see maybe unexpected brands taking a leap of faith and recognizing a need to change. So yeah, as well as those ones that have been set up for purpose. From day dot, it's really great to see people kind of making those business decisions and undergoing the change that is necessary, I guess, to set your business up for a sustainable future.
Mia Fileman 4:28
And do you work predominantly with product based brands?
Erin Stafford 4:30
products service, and some I guess not for profits in the research space? Lots of different things. I think that's that's the best thing about being agency side, I must say being able to tap into different types of companies and areas on a daily basis.
Mia Fileman 4:47
Yeah, two days are the same. Exactly. So in the, in your view, what is a good definition of brand versus performance marketing?
Speaker 1 4:58
Yeah, but obviously been thinking a little bit about out this, I think people, and at the moment with a lot of the discussion that I'm seeing, it seems as though they are completely disparate and separate. And there's, there's no, there's no way of merging the two, the way I like to think about it is performance marketing has that conversions based goal, it is aiming to generate sales or clicks or conversions or leads, or whatever the case may be. And I think traditionally, brand marketing or brand building has been perceived as the fluffy bit. And it's awareness levels or less tangible results, and therefore hasn't had maybe as much importance placed on it. But brand marketing is really about enhancing customer attitudes towards your brand. And making sure that at the end of the day, people know what your brand stands for, or what your USPs are rather than just the particular product and the price that you're selling it at.
Mia Fileman 6:05
Yeah, so for brand marketing, we looked at some examples, what would they be?
Speaker 1 6:09
I think in terms of brand marketing, you want to be speaking about the why of your brand, maybe it's a bit more of a fun activation is the way that I've seen brands maybe take on these types of campaigns more recently, I think the brand marketing side and the brand building side is perceived to maybe not have as much of a direct impact on revenue. And that's why people are not as willing or there's debates at the moment around how do I split my budget between performance and brand marketing. And I'm of the opinion that you can have both, or they can kind of work in tandem. Because it's not necessarily about long term versus short term gain. In performance marketing can only achieve short term and brand marketing can only achieve long term. But I think it's it's important to consider how they could work together because brands are not going to turn off all of their performance marketing campaigns, and nor should they but the brands that are winning in this space, are leveraging their performance marketing channels to communicate their brand messaging, and maybe that includes something about their sustainability and impact. Maybe it doesn't. But really, it needs to kind of get to the heart of why choose my brand over another, instead of simply illustrating the need to buy and converting customers on that click.
Mia Fileman 7:33
Yeah, exactly. I think it's helpful for the listener to understand that the performance marketing, you can look at it as like paying for results. So it's marketing campaigns, like sales leads or clicks that are conducted through third party channels like websites and search engines and social media sites. So examples are display ads, Google ads, meta ads, LinkedIn ads, affiliate marketing, this is all these are all examples of performance marketing, and enables brands to run highly targeted marketing campaigns that deliver a very measurable return on investment. And brand marketing, by contrast, and I'm a brand marketer through and through, is, as you said, Erin, is more about building awareness, changing attitudes, building perceptions, affinity towards a brand, which, Yes, some people find fluffy or softer. But this is also incredibly important when we're talking about differentiation because you can have underwear that's made from bamboo and 100 brands could make the same underwear made from bamboo. But why would someone choose your brand? If there isn't a brand affinity and there wasn't a perception or an attitude around that brand?
Erin Stafford 8:52
Yeah.
Mia Fileman 8:52
So brand is what gives the company value beyond just the product. Exactly. Yeah. And examples of brand marketing is running a brand awareness campaign, which every major brand you've ever heard of does this. It could also be launching a podcast, it could be your packaging, it could be your product suite, it could be your distribution channels, it could be in a loyalty program. There's lots of different ways to do brand marketing and performance marketing. And I'm 100% with you that they need to work together.
Erin Stafford 9:30
Yeah, and I think how I think one of the interesting things that you've just brought up is, you know, performance marketing is on these channels, but I think you can also do brand building on those same channels. While you know, meta is, or more recently has been reserved for conversion campaigns and optimizing based on return on adspend or something similar. Brands can still leverage the channels that they have available within their performance marketing suite, but reposition what they're using those channels for, instead of necessarily only running a, you know, ad sales and conversions campaign on those channels consider are my brand messages actually being communicated here? And is there a way that I can get them across to the customers that I've kind of accumulated on this platform or that I know that I can reach in that hyper targeted way, perhaps that makes it an easier sell in to executives at your company to decision makers or the people who hold the purse strings, because I think the reason that performance marketing has dominated for the past 20 years, as you said, is because it's so measurable, but what we're seeing at the moment in in the performance marketing space is that measurability that we're so used to, is slowly eroding, and it won't erode completely. But with new privacy constraints, etc, which is all great news, it is a little bit more difficult to attribute, really directly one channel with all of your sales or one campaign with X many dollars in revenue, because a these platforms are becoming I guess, more restrictive with what data they collect, and they share to maybe a Google Analytics, but also because the messy middle is just getting Messier. There are so many channels and platforms and things to kind of touch points for consumers to take into account before they have that purchase decision. And we can do as much data driven attribution modeling as we want, but we're not going to necessarily know for certain it was, you know, this ad in this campaign that broke the proverbial camel's back, and led to a purchase. But we do know that the brand affinity, awareness, obviously, but really, the perceptions of the brand are going to help at every single phase of that purchase journey. And at every single touch point, your customer needs to know why you why this brand, like you said, they might be getting ads from five different bamboo underwear brands in their Facebook newsfeed or the Instagram stories on any given day. And if we're not clearly communicating our USPs, even in those performance marketing instances, and letting people know, this is what sets our brand apart, then how do you expect to win at the conversion phase?
Mia Fileman 12:22
Yeah, exactly. And it was really interesting, I read an article that was published by let me tell you, the drum, who interviewed the CMO of Airbnb who said that for, you know, the last five or 10 years of Airbnb, they're really focused quite hard on performance marketing, but they are now ditching it in favor of brand campaigns, big bold brand campaigns, because as a result of I guess, over investing in over relying on that performance marketing, the end consumer has been left wondering like, what is Airbnb? What is the differentiation? What is the reason for existing, that has been lost, because that those messages have been diluted in favor of, hey, buy this vacation home in this location today, it's ready for you and waiting for you. So it is really about making sure that we are touching on all of our business objectives, not just short term sales. We're and and that's very, very hard, as you mentioned, when you have to report up the chain and, and you know, there's budgets to hit. But sometimes when we prioritize short term sales, we can end up destroying brand value in the long term. Exactly. Because we're not getting those messages across about what is our brand what is the unique selling proposition of this brand? And why should people care?
Speaker 1 13:53
Yeah, it's really interesting, that point of potentially eroding brand affinity or equity with performance marketing campaigns, and I wonder if you know, the Airbnb example. Anecdotally, I've heard you know, people maybe reconsidering Airbnb as their first go to option over a hotel because maybe it's been too difficult, the host asking me to do too many things, etc, etc. So I wonder if you know, the shift from Airbnb stems from perhaps some brand research that they did to uncover, What are the things that people hate about Airbnb or that they love about hotels? Or, you know, what are the things that we truly need to communicate, to improve our brand perception and then have landed on brand marketing is what we need to focus on because we need to rebuild or re establish the why of, you know, why would I choose Airbnb? Why is it going to be my first option? And I think being able to reset and understand that is really commendable by Airbnb, and it would be a difficult decision I'm sure that the marketing team kind of to'd and fro'd over for a long time. But it is super important. I think it's critical to kind of ask yourself whether your business is as big as Airbnb or as small as, you know, a one man band without performance marketing? Would my brand be discovered by new people? And would the people who already know about my brand, continue to understand what it's about? Like, what would it be top of mind? Do people know why they're buying from me? Because if, for example, God forbid, all of your Facebook ads went down, or whatever the case may be, these have rented platforms, most of the time performance marketing channels, we don't want to put all of our eggs in those baskets. We do need to make sure we're creating future demand with those. Yeah, more core messages. Those USPS as you mentioned. Yeah, I think similar to Airbnb, a lot of businesses are probably having these discussions internally, because I've been having these discussions with, you know, our partners and with people in the market saying that their performance marketing is maybe losing its impact. It's strong but stagnating, maybe they're worried that people won't choose their brand. If there's a dupe in the market that's cheaper, particularly on the sustainability side, like, how do people know what we're doing? How do they know to choose us? Essentially, if we don't have those things in place? So I think it's really pertinent for people to be asking these questions of their own marketing as well.
Mia Fileman 16:29
Yeah, so do i.
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Just going back to the Airbnb example, like they are getting a lot of negative publicity because Airbnb is promoting short term vacation rentals when we have a housing crisis. And so you know, that is already not great. And then post pandemic, they introduced these exorbitant cleaning fees, which you know, to get it up to the sanitation level that that you need for post pandemic but it's now at $400 If you stay two nights and it's only $400 to save two nights it's also a $400 cleaning fee just can essentially double your price and so it's not all marketing like, Airbnb need to go back and do some soul searching about their actual product but what's interesting is not having the brand marketing not having the hearts and minds or dare I say fluffy side of promoting why Airbnb exists Why did it start who isn't for what is the the key benefit of Airbnb versus a hotel is that you get the place to yourself that's the thing. And so Airbnb's latest brand campaign is literally have the place to yourself. Like that's the tagline. Yeah. And then as a result of that we can accept now that we know that okay, but we get the place to ourselves now that we know that we get a washing machine, we get a kitchen, you know, it's not all upside, there's some downsides to it, which means there is a bigger cleaning fee because there are bigger spaces that we need to clean. And so we can balance out some of this when we are making sure that we're communicating our brand messages. And also since Airbnb launched. I mean, they were quite a disruptor in the short term accommodation market. There are now a million Airbnb equivalents.
Erin Stafford 19:05
Very true.
Mia Fileman 19:06
Yeah, we've got VRBO I'm sure that's not how you pronounce it but that's what it is
Erin Stafford 19:12
in my mind
Mia Fileman 19:17
you know, you've got stays, which is like lifted their game. you've got Riparide.
Speaker 1 19:23
Yeah, I guess smaller players entering the market, but I think with the Airbnb example, the they're just kind of going back and reiterating their value to people in this campaign so that people have got the tools to make that decision and weigh up. Yeah, maybe it's bit more expensive, but I do really value having the place to myself. And just being able to inject that back into people's you know, purchase decision and pathway will hopefully have a big impact for them because it's it's the core of the offering. And I think, yeah, brands can learn a lot from that. I mean, there's obviously been mistakes made along the way, like you said, it's not all marketing, but it is, I guess, unfortunately marketing's job to rehab this brand. If they want to achieve anything with their performance marketing tactics, or or anything at all in terms of generating revenue from these activities,
Mia Fileman 20:21
for sure. And what do you think is driving the lack of effectiveness in performance marketing, you mentioned the privacy changes in privacy protection, I would also assume the removal of third party cookies.
Erin Stafford 20:38
Yeah, it's not necessarily, you know, hindering effectiveness, full stop it just making it a little bit more difficult to measure. And people are having to pivot back to pre superclean attribution days, and take a bit more of a step back and go Well, what in totality, is impacting my return on investment, because it's not as clean as it used to be, which is fine. And maybe this is a good shift. But in terms of that, effectiveness, I guess, a lot of the time people invest the advertising dollars in the individual platform, campaign ad set ad audience getting very, very granular in only the things that are bringing them the highest return on investment in whatever way that you're measuring it on the platform. And perhaps that means investing really, really heavily in middle and bottom of funnel activities. And you're not reaching new people with those campaigns. And while the return on adspend on platform, which isn't a metric that, you know, we should base too many decisions on might look fabulous, what is the long term implication of the vast majority of your budget being focused on that very small portion of the market. And inevitably, it means that your performance stagnates because we're not getting more and more people into that stage. And I think that's, that's where it's losing effectiveness. It's not necessarily because the channels are broken, or because it's no longer a viable tactic. It's because we've got so deep into this, spend all the money on the thing that's generating, you know, a to be highest revenue. And we've lost the nuance, I guess, of the bigger picture of marketing and the bigger picture of brand building that goes into making that campaign effective. You know, if we're spending all of our advertising dollars on the bottom of funnel, you forgot this in your cart kind of campaign, then how are we telling people about what our brand is about, or, you know, getting people to understand why they should purchase from us in the first place and building up that audience. So I think that's maybe where brands are seeing these tactics lose their effectiveness, it definitely also, you know, the privacy policies, etc, just make it more difficult to track, it means that brands need to be a little bit more trusting of targeting options given by these platforms lean a little bit more into the broad targeting, that is now available and focus more on your creative. And your creative has to hero USPs, at some point in that purchase journey. So I think there's a lot of opportunities for brands to kind of think more about bringing brand building into their performance marketing. And one really, really easy way is to just, first and foremost, make sure that your performance marketing isn't eroding away at your brand building. If your performance marketing ads, place higher importance on tactics that will get clicks, but might not be representative of of your brand and your brand voice. That's one big mistake to avoid. And that's maybe when your performance marketing starts being a bad performer for you. You know, if if you're not thinking about how this stacks up to your brand's perception, when it's being delivered in feeds three to five times, you know, per person, then that's yeah, that's a real pitfall of some of these strategies.
Mia Fileman 24:16
That's such a good point. Yeah, that you say these brands, and they have this wonderful ethos and these strong values, and then you get served one of their ads, and you're like, What is this? And it's like, exactly, it's optimized to click and it's optimized for sale, but it almost flies in the face of their corporate brand identity. And like those two things should not work in isolation of each other.
Erin Stafford 24:39
Yeah it can be really jarring as well as a potential consumer. If you've been on the website and you've read about all these great things that they're doing, and then you get this ad that is kind of the antithesis of that. It leaves your customers quite confused.
Mia Fileman 24:53
Yeah.
Erin Stafford 24:54
Whether that's in the way that you word your ads, if it's all focused on salesy language, whatever the case, maybe there's lots of different small things that can end up eroding away at your brand value of perception, you know, the most obvious examples of those where it's just a complete mismatch. And I guess the way to avoid that is to just before you approve any performance marketing content, or you before you build a campaign, ask yourself, does this add or erode my brand? Essentially, does it add to? Or does it erode my brand? If it erodes, it says, you know, we need to go back to the drawing board. And if we're not sure, if it's adding, then I think that's when we need to reconsider, am I truly communicating my brand's value in these campaigns? If my brand is 100%, You know, purpose LED is what we lead with. If impact and sustainability is a core reason that your customers choose you, then why can't your performance marketing be speaking about those things, if that's your means of getting in front of people on a day to day basis, that is your opportunity to present those USPs and really get the most out of your performance marketing, By blending it with some brand marketing. And I guess, then the conversation shifts to how do I know you know, which element is effective? The brand marketing component versus the performance marketing component. What if by introducing these USPs or removing some of these, you know, more spammy tactics, the individual performance of my Facebook campaign or whatever platform we're using actually dips? How can I reconcile that, Is it building my brand at another point in the funnel? Does it have a longer term implication? Or am I just going to trial something that is more brand building on these platforms for two weeks, and then freak out and turn it off? Because it didn't get as high of a return as the other campaigns we were running. I think that's, that's then what becomes an ongoing conversation. And we might need to reconsider what metrics we're looking at to judge the effectiveness of these campaigns. And again, take a step back a little bit more big picture.
Mia Fileman 27:02
Yeah a couple of things I want to unpack there. First of all, this is a really good lesson in making sure you choose the right agency for your brand. Because, you know, we have had, I've worked agency side and client side, but you can work with agencies where they're like, no, no, this is how performance marketing needs to be done. This is how you're going to get the results. And you get tantalized by the sales sales sales. Whereas with your brand at Compass Studio, you are a brand first agency like you are not going to forsake the brand in favor of the short term results. I think that that's really important for brand managers listening to this, who need to push back to their agencies, whether that's search, whether that's paid to be like, No, I'm willing to do whatever it takes to a point where it starts to then diminish my brand and my brand reputation long term. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. And then the other thing, and we're going back a bit. But the other reason why potentially brands are seeing or questioning, the performance of performance marketing is the cost of it has increased. And so, you know, it used to be the case that, you know, a certain percentage was spent on digital ads, and there was still quite a bit on traditional and now, brands have redeployed all of that budget. So it's predominantly digital. And as a result, it has increased the cost so steadily over the last two decades, we've seen the cost of performance marketing just increase and increase an increase. And we can see that even with our own ads on a very small budget, if I run a conversion campaign through meta, I pay substantially more for it than if I was to run a brand awareness or a lead generation campaign with that objective in mind, and then use my email marketing, for example, to then make the sale as opposed to rely on matter to make that sale for me.
Erin Stafford 29:01
Yeah.
Mia Fileman 29:02
So there's ways that brands can re approach this a lot more strategically.
Erin Stafford 29:06
Yeah. And I think I like your point about, you know, maybe you need to refocus your budgets. And yes, I agree, putting all of your eggs in one basket and relying so heavily on performance marketing in these traditional conversions campaigns is effective at generating revenue. But if, for example, Instagram was no longer a platform, you could advertise on, or all of your consumers shift away to a different platform, then then what is your tactic? How are you going to make your sales? How are you going to reach your target? So I think yeah, being a little bit, not spread too thin. But being a little bit more wise about the way that you spend your advertising dollars is certainly on a lot of people's radar at the moment and I agree using more of those top of funnel tactics on these platforms that are available, you know, you can use traditionally performance marketing platforms to do brand building in this way and then convert people as you mentioned on email marketing or, or in other instances as well, I think at its core, the difference and the brand VS performance marketing, I think they can work in harmony, you just have to align your performance marketing with the brand growth strategy. They can't speak different languages to your consumer. Like we've said before, I think that's, that's a really good starting point. Yeah, in terms of then tangibly measuring the impact of that, I think, we need to consider total return on investment, rather than the return on investment of this particular campaign that is conversion oriented. And, you know, we want we want to see the best results in these things. And I think, with performance marketing, having such a stronghold over budgets, marketing managers often may feel the need to kind of go well, the return on investment, we're only going to judge that off this conversions campaign, we're not going to include the budget that we spent on brand building to judge the return on investment. So then at the end of the day, that performance marketing campaign looks like it's generated everything, and kind of overstating the credit that we should kind of be affording those types of campaigns. And then, I guess, reducing our ability to sell in the effectiveness of the brand building activities at the same time when we're speaking about Yeah, obtaining those budgets. So I mean, in terms of tangible things that people can do here, for measurement, I think looking at maybe total return on investment, or marketing efficiency ratio, taking into account everything, rather than just ROAS in platform would be a really good place to start and just see what is happening for your brand. What is what is happening on a on a bigger scale than just your performance marketing campaigns might be a nice spot. And then like Airbnbs done, maybe it's going back another step and going do I need to do some brand research? Do I even understand how people perceive my brand right now? So I can decide do I need to change it? Do I need to emphasize some other messages in this upcoming campaign? Because you just don't know what you don't know. And I think making a brand campaign, or brand building campaign based on an assumption would be a mistake. And that's, that's where you maybe don't see the return on investment.
Mia Fileman 32:21
Agree. Another alternative, and it's what we tell our students is to run a conversion campaign. So that's great. Also run a brand campaign, like, dedicate once or twice in the year to focus on brand building that healthy top of funnel, and then measure the effectiveness of your brand awareness campaign by awareness, like how many new people have we reached? And what are they saying about us? Like, what is the the brand recognition so then we run dedicated campaigns based on objectives, as opposed to measuring only conversions. But actually, the objective was awareness and affinity or lead generation, like, you know, and so if you're going to hit it pretty hard with performance marketing, make sure you balance that out by running at least one brand campaign per year that communicates some of those more brand building attributes.
Speaker 1 33:11
Yeah I think and, in particular, I guess I'll put my impact and sustainability hat back on here, because brands who have, I guess those values at their core, need to make sure they're communicating that on a regular basis, while you're probably competing with brands that don't, I guess, have those same values and maybe can put products into market at a lower cost, you definitely need to make sure that the value of your brand is clearly communicated to your customers, if you're relying on them choosing your brand over another because of this point of difference, you need to make sure that that point of difference is really clearly communicated. And in that instance, perhaps a brand campaign could look like an activism campaign, where you're really telling your consumers Yeah, this is what we stand for. This is how we're different and using your advertising dollars to actually make a difference to whatever it is that I guess that purpose or the greater purpose of your brand.
Erin Stafford 34:09
Ben and Jerry's recently, really great example of putting their advertising dollars, where their mouth is, I suppose they've got some great sustainability and impact partners and will spend on those things will do campaigns that truly have activism at the core, and they're not about selling ice cream. They're about supporting the partners that they've chosen as part of Yes, their brand building efforts, but also achieving their sustainability and kind of purpose goals. Recently, the paddle out that they did with Surfrider, Compass was lucky enough to work on and that's a really great example of a campaign that none of it was about selling ice cream. You know, there was no headlines about buying a pint of chunky monkey, but there was certainly some brand build any efforts going on there and making sure that people know that Ben and Jerrys stand for these things by actually standing for them is a great example of a brand doing brand building activities in a way that makes sense to them.
Mia Fileman 35:15
Yeah, I feel like ZeroCo do that as well. I don't know if I've ever received any performance marketing from ZeroCo their emails are where they do a lot of, I guess, the more promotional selling, but they're all of their campaigns have been brand building. And what we haven't spoken about yet on this podcast is the fact that like, customers are influenced by that now that has increased in the hierarchy of factors that influence the purchase decision before it used to be like product, price, brand, you know, and now like, impact, sustainability, all of these things are very important to modern day customers. So not talking about them in any of your marketing, whether it's brand or performance is really doing your brand a disservice because customers are actively seeking out brands, who are doing the right thing. So that our climate bettering world bettering as you put it at Compass. But this is important. And so it's no longer about can I buy the cheapest bamboo underwear, we want it all we want bamboo underwear that is sustainable.
Erin Stafford 36:23
Yeah.
Mia Fileman 36:23
And we can have that there are brands that do both.
Erin Stafford 36:26
Yeah, I think people or brands are understandably a little bit hesitant to speak about their impact. If they're not, maybe they're new to the space or you know, ACCC, are very, very strict with greenwashing guidelines. And as they should be, those those protections are there for a reason. But I think it's almost steered brands in the opposite direction, where maybe you're too afraid to start talking about these things, or you're not confident in your claims. Or you're worried that your consumers won't perceive them as being legitimate or that there'll be confusing, and I think that's when having, yeah, some fresh eyes on these campaigns, or just having the courage to start communicating these things is, is really vital. And perhaps that means establishing a bit of a strategy for what that messaging looks like. Perhaps it means doing a little bit of brand research in the background to really understand, yes, I know consumers on the whole care about sustainability. But what aspect of sustainability to my consumers care about?
Mia Fileman 37:25
Yeah?
Erin Stafford 37:25
Is it the manufacturing? Is it the packaging? Is it what you're doing on the outside, and you know, the manufacturing isn't that important to me, I think understanding those things before you go and even create your USPs or do a brand marketing campaign that really leans quite heavily on those, or it could be the case that you use it as a test to understand what your customer does value. You know, if you've got lots of these things going on for your brand, you could use a brand building campaign in the way that you would use a performance marketing campaign and run some tests. Maybe the objective isn't conversions at this point in time, but understanding what is going to get a higher click through rate, what are people, you know, leaning towards in terms of this messaging, And then you can, you know, run that on a small scale, and then understand exactly what will convert at a larger scale when you choose to run that brand campaign as well.
Mia Fileman 38:22
I think that's brilliant advice. Because I know that there are a lot of brands who are quite apprehensive to start talking about their green credentials for fear of being labeled greenwashing. And, you know, like, in the world that we live in now, you can't please anyone, like you could go to any ad on the internet, and there's going to be hatred and negative comments in the comments. And so I love what you said about going to the source of the customers and figuring out what's important to them and, and focusing on those claims or those milestones, if you will, that are relevant to to the audience.
Erin Stafford 38:59
Yeah.
Mia Fileman 38:59
Great. Can you think of any other examples of brands who you feel like a really striking this balance? Well, we mentioned zero CO, Ben and Jerry's anyone else that comes to mind?
Speaker 1 39:09
I think Thank you do a really good job just because I guess they're Why is so integral to each of their products and their messaging, they inherently are good brand marketers in that way as well and invest in those types of things. Who else is doing a good job? I think Boody does a fabulous job of conveying I guess, yeah, their their purpose and their broader goals and balances it well, you know, still achieving performance, I assume in terms of those campaigns, too. It's not the only thing that they talk about, but it is you know, something that's really sets their brand apart. So I appreciate that they continue to leverage that and and focus on that value proposition to consumers.
Mia Fileman 39:58
Yeah, their campaign with Dr. Jane Goodall was is one of my favorites. It is absolutely brilliant. They couldn't have found a better.
Erin Stafford 40:07
Yeah.
Mia Fileman 40:07
Ambassador. And I just love the creative as well. Yeah, like it's so lush. It's this like rain forests, the vibes. It's great. I'm a huge fan of that campaign.
Erin Stafford 40:18
Yeah, no, definitely, I think our co founder and co director, Natalie, Dean Waymark, also hosted a podcast late last year, and spoke to Capitol brewing about their latest campaign with their zero alc beer. And I think they did a really great job in instilling brand building in those efforts showing up at the finish line of the Canberra marathon with a non alc beer ready for you, you know, there's, there's lots of things that you can do to get your brand into this sphere and tap into new audiences and convey why they should care about it, that that people could be considering alongside and in tandem with their performance marketing.
Mia Fileman 41:02
Yeah. And what is the campaign that you have loved working on Compass?
Erin Stafford 41:08
I love all of them. Um, we get we get some really interesting climate focused campaigns. And I guess we worked with seabin on a number of their virtual raises and CSF funding campaigns, which I mean, at their core, those are trying to represent why would I invest in this campaign over another. And it's really speaking about what our mission is, and what sets us apart. So I think those campaigns are always really fun. And very interesting. We are working on some really exciting stuff at the moment in the impact strategy, space and impact communication space with a number of brands. So I can't wait to see those campaigns come to life. But unfortunately, we'll have to wait and see.
Mia Fileman 41:53
Hmm, okay, so we'll have to have you back so you can talk about it. And just to end today, I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about working with an agency. Because you know, there is that decision to be made in terms of you build up your brand, like when are you ready to start outsourcing? What does that look like? And I would love to hear from your perspective, which brands are sort of the best place to start working with an agency, what should they have in place before they engage someone that compass?
Erin Stafford 42:25
Yeah I think understanding what you're offering is, who your audiences and what your key messages are that you want to convey is a really good place to start. I think having a true understanding of your brand, so you can accurately brief an agency on what it is that you want support on would be a great foundation to have, even if you're kind of going, I don't know, this, I might need to expand my audience, I might need some help with that. Having that base understanding of where you're at, I think is really important. From a, you know, if you're looking to engage in agency for digital marketing, performance, marketing, and those kinds of things, I think you don't have to have had campaigns necessarily running in the past. But having a good foundation, a solid website, or, you know, some experience of this is what my customers like, because I've been posting organically or I've been doing these things in the background. I think that's a really good place to start as well.
But it's just agencies can help people who are busy, you're busy, and you do what you do best. And you go to an agency to get them to do what they do best. And I think that's the best kind of partnership, where it's you guys know what you're doing. And maybe that's focused on creating impact with your brand. And an agency like Compass would be able to then come in and say you've got that side, we'll just focus on amplifying whatever's happening in the background, making sure your customers know about it. So think once you've got your house in order, it's a good idea to start thinking about agency, if that's the right support for you.
Mia Fileman 44:03
Yeah, I mean, there's so many benefits to it, you've probably invested in building it and taking it as far as you can take it within your skill set. And then you're ready for some fresh ideas and some creativity and some new life to get into your marketing. But also at that point, you're probably wanting to step into your role as the visionary CEO of this brand, as opposed to the person doing every single damn thing. So like, definitely with our students, we hope to get them to a point where they can then outsource to an agency. It's like you've arrived, you can now let this go and you
Erin Stafford 44:38
Congratulations!
Mia Fileman 44:39
Congratulations. You don't have to post on Instagram anymore. You don't have to log into Facebook Ads Manager and try to decipher what the backend looks like.
Erin Stafford 44:49
And maybe that's what you know, you need to be able to focus on these bigger brand marketing and brand building pieces is that bit of perspective, the ability to step back and not Don't be so in the day to day. And that's where these you know great campaign ideas come from and these, you know, great brand messages, kind of a born out of time and space, I think
Mia Fileman 45:10
time and space, what a beautiful way to end. Well, it has been such an absolute pleasure chatting with you, Erin, I could have geeked out with you for several more hours. Thank you for being so generous with your time and your ideas and your insights when it comes to digital marketing. I will of course put all the links to compass studio in the show notes. Is there anything you would like to end on?
Unknown Speaker 45:37
No, just thank you for having me. And I guess you can have both brand build in your performance marketing.
Mia Fileman 45:42
Love it. So good.
Thank you.
Erin Stafford 45:44
Thank you.
Mia Fileman 45:47
Thank you, you listened right up until the end. So why not hit that subscribe button and keep the good marketing rolling. Podcast reviews. I'll have warm hugs, and they're also the best way to support a small business. You can connect with me, me or fireman on Instagram or LinkedIn and feel free to send me a message. I'm super friendly.
