CustPlace, a European e-reputation and customer experience software vendor, conducted a study at the end of 2023 on brand talk (i.e. the systematic approach to communicating brand values, commitments and identity) that caught our attention. I interviewed Nicolas Marette, the company’s founder, who explained the results of this study, which shows that marketers should talk more to their customers than about themselves. Without, however, denying the importance of brand communication.
Brand Talk Engages Only a Third of Consumers
-
Brand talk is not the major concern of the majority of consumers, so brands should focus on the painpoints of their customers instead. All this seems like common sense for a marketer. Photography antimuseum.com
For as long as we’ve been telling companies that they must stop talking about themselves and that it’s imperative to focus on their customers’ painpoints, no matter how obvious it may seem, a recent study by CustPlace rightly demonstrates that the lack of empathy is still the major problem weighing on brands and their images.
While brand talk dwells, sometimes heavily, on values, commitments and identities, customers grumble about service, products or delivery. Of course, there are counter-examples. Brands for which the label is more important than the product itself, as in the fashion industry for instance.
But on the whole, this rule applies to all. And not just for SEO purposes. Here’s the transcript of my interview with Nicolas Marette following the publication of this very interesting study.
What methodology did you use for this study?
Nicolas Marette. Our customers have been asking us about the impact of brand talk for quite some time. Our study analysed one million Google queries, looking at the keywords most searched for in relation to brands. We also segmented this research by industry and realised that from one sector to another, the queries vary greatly. We looked at all the major brands, the leaders in each of the ten sectors we studied, to understand search trends over the years. To do this, we used our own ‘bots’ and also online tools such as SEMrush.
What did you measure exactly?
NM. We measure a brand’s image through all the queries performed by users. Let’s take a manufacturer in the FMCG sector, an optician or a home improvement company. In this case, we’re going to look for all the queries about the brand, to find out what interests Internet users. Typically, this is ‘brand name + review’, ‘consumer review’ or ‘customer review’. And within these searches, we are interested in two major trends. On the one hand, queries related to products, services or points of sale. And on the other hand, those relating to employee opinions and employer branding. The latter are the ones that have emerged the most in recent years. In particular, we are seeing an increase in popularity of all the major job ad platforms.
-
Brand image depends less on brand discourse, Nicolas Marette tells us, than on reviews published by customers and employees – illustration produced with Midjourney V 6.1 in custom mode - Only 36% of consumers are interested in Brand Talk
NM. Any marketing manager for a major consumer brand would expect to find her or his brand’s messages at around 50–60%. This means that behind the other two thirds are queries about products and services. That’s the first major lesson.
The second lesson is that behaviours vary greatly from one industry to another. In the hospitality and FMCG sectors too, consumer interest in brand talk is even more limited, at 18% instead of 36%. In the hotel industry, in the broad sense of the term, including campsites, consumers will look for a particular location, and read the opinions of other customers. In such cases, much more emphasis will be placed on reviews of the hotel, rental property or campsite.
On the other hand, when it comes to mass consumption, people are more interested in the product. If you’re buying ham, for example, you’ll be looking to see if it contains nitrite, as it is a growing concern for UK consumers.
Don’t companies tend to talk about themselves too much?
NM. Exactly. When it comes to managing e-reputation, a lot of attention is paid to the brand and the network, whereas consumers and customers are much more interested in the details of products, services and locations.
Of course, a brand must invest in a coherent and consistent brand message, but it should focus more on the issues that interest its customers, to in-store opinions and, in this is a new trend, to employee reviews and comments. In particular, in the case of temp work or services, employees’ opinions matter most. Brand identity or brand talk are less critical for consumers.
Higher education and ready-to-wear is a different kettle of fish, though
NM. That’s quite understandable. In ready-to-wear, we talk less about products and more about the label. We choose a brand for shoes, jumpers or clothing. In these sectors, we remain attached to the brand beyond the specificity of the product. As far as teaching is concerned, future applicants or parents accompanying their children after the baccalaureate will focus more on the reputation of the school than on the characteristics of the campus, which will no doubt be less salient.
Employee Reviews vs Brand Talk
NM. Customer opinions are all the rage, employee opinions much less. Our vision at Custplace is very different, though. We’ve even launched an international platform dedicated to such reviews, Review.jobs.
-
The Review.jobs platform launched by Custplace - Our study has highlighted the growing importance of requests based on employee reviews. Even a customer who makes a query about a brand will see customer reviews crop up. But they will also see employee reviews into that lot. This has an impact on the brand’s image. However, the vast majority of brands in 2024 still pay too little attention to the opinions of their employees. They don’t realise how important employer branding is. Over and above the importance of this fact for new hires, employee reviews have an impact on the brand’s image.
-
Employees first, customers second, Vineet Nayar’s famous book is analysed here on Charterworks - In the real estate industry, the impact of employee reviews is also significant. Behind a large network, an outlet or an agency in this sector, the people who advise consumers matter, and consumers value their opinions.
In conclusion, what is your advice to companies?
NM. We don’t recommend you to stop talking about your brand, but you should take a step back from it and ask yourself the right questions. If you’re a marketing or digital executive, simply look at these queries. Google does a great job of listing them with its Google Suggest feature. You start typing a few letters and the search engine will suggest the rest. This suggestion is the statistical result of queries typed by all Internet users as of now. Take a look at these results and you’ll already have a lot of food for thought and your brand strategy for the years to come.
————————————————————
Yann Gourvennec a créé visionarymarketing.com en 1996. Il est conférencier et auteur de 6 livres. En 2014, il est passé d'intrapreneur à entrepreneur en créant son agence de marketing numérique.
- AGI (General Artificial Intelligence), Myth or Reality? - 08/10/2024
- What if your smartphone were the future of GenAI? - 27/09/2024
- Brand Talk Engages Only a Third of Consumers - 27/09/2024
