why manufacturers want to know client sentiment – Nielsen

Knowing that personal connections are key to brand longevity, savvy marketers are looking forward to a third year with COVID-19. To do that, they need to focus on building and maintaining trust with their audience—and which channels to use in that effort.

While it’s important for brands to maintain balanced marketing strategies, marketers should pay attention to consumer sentiment when allocating their media spend. For example, SME’s Trust in Advertising 2021 study found that brand sponsorship is among the most trusted advertising sources among global consumers, yet most marketers do not readily incorporate newer advertising formats such as brand integrations, sponsorships and product placements into their media planning. These marketing formats were considered irrelevant by nearly 34% of marketers who participated in our 2021 annual marketing report.

According to the report, the significant growth in digital marketing spend, including search, email and social media, shows how important these channels are from a marketing perspective. Conversion-focused digital marketing is attractive because it drives sales for the current quarter, not the next. The appeal of short-term sales—and the ability to measure effort—serves to drive investment in these strategies. Marketers surveyed in the study believe that email, social media and search are the most efficient for their business.

However, the downside of over-focusing on these digital channels is that our recent study of advertising trust found that consumers do not rate these channels as highly trustworthy.

Advertisers wanted to spend less on traditional channels than on digital channels. Marketers, on the other hand, only said they plan to spend 50% more on TV or AM/FM radio, while 4.23% said they would increase those spends by 1% to 49%. These channels are considered more trustworthy than other digital options from a consumer trust perspective.

Marketers often rank their brand building and conversion efforts as overarching goals. They then plan their channel strategies based on these categories. As the new year begins, marketers need to keep their primary goals in mind as they plan their channel and spend strategies.

Our Era of Adaptation report finds that the top goals for marketers in the second half of 2021 were brand awareness (25%) and customer acquisition (42%), with customer retention being significantly less important (19.6%). Marketers should focus on building brand awareness and branding strategies for brands pursuing these goals. You also need to know which channels customers trust the most. The Brand Resonance white paper shows that conversion-focused marketing strategies outperform many scientific studies that say a taller funnel is best for growth.

Growth fueling debates notwithstanding, advertisers should take no guesswork when it comes to channel choice and the expected impact on revenue. Marketers can learn how channel effectiveness affects long-term sales by examining the channel’s ability to drive awareness and other metrics with latent sales benefits. For example, consumers believe that television is one of the most effective channels for making them aware of a brand. Yes, on average, television is one of the most effective channels for increasing sales over the long term, but every campaign is different – ​​and so is television’s effectiveness across the board. In 25% of SME branding research, television was identified as the channel with the worst long-term results. However, 25% of respondents considered it to be the most effective. The takeaway for marketers is that without measurement, your quest for meaningful growth could ultimately rest on assumptions, generalizations, and gut feelings.

The effectiveness of using digital channels to strengthen relationships with existing consumers can’t be discounted, but it’s important that marketers aiming for long-term growth also consider consumer sentiment in addition to their martech stacks. Since word-of-mouth is the most trusted channel among consumers – and has grown as such over time – marketers should be as person-centric as possible.

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