INBOUND 2022: The Importance of Memory in Marketing

Ty Heath, the Director of Market Engagement at The B2B Institute with LinkedIn, wants us to start thinking about memory. Most purchases start when we search our memories. Not Google, Heath says. This is the search engine we need to be prioritizing.

Generating Memories

Situation influences memory. Heath brings up a study conducted to show that people who learn vocabulary underwater have better recall of that vocabulary when they are back underwater. As marketers, we are often focused on becoming top-of-mind though we rarely think about share-of-mind. While it’s great to ensure that buyers recognize your brand, it’s even better if buyers think of your brand when entering the market to purchase.

Situational Awareness

Brand awareness is a term often used to describe the level of brand recognition your company has and your customers abilities to recall you. But being known and being selected by customers are two different things. For example, most people would be able to name a variety of different coffee brands, even ones they don’t use. But, when asked to name the first coffee brand that came to mind, most people in the United States would probably go with Starbucks. This was shown in an exercise where Heath asked these questions to her audience. But she also had a follow-up question: Which 3 coffee brands come to mind when you’re on your way to work, sitting at home, and meeting up with a friend? Many people had separate answers for all 3 situations. This is a stellar example of the difference between awareness (How many coffee brands can you name?) and situational awareness (Which brand comes to mind for a specific scenario?).

Using These Strategies to Become More Financial

According to Heath, marketing is in both a reputational crisis and a leadership crisis. Our reputation struggles as non-marketers do not see brand strength as important when it comes to financial performance. Our leadership struggles as we aren’t as successful at the board level due to our lack of financial involvement. According to Heath, Our peers see marketing as a cost centre.

With our new knowledge of how memory can affect purchasing decisions and the use of category entry points (CEPs as discussed in a previous blog), we allocate finances in smaller, more useful forms of messaging that capitalize on and create memories associated with your company. This doesn’t only go to buyers who are in-market now, however. Heath mentions that out of all buyers, the ones in-market only account for 5%, while the other 95% are out-of-market or future buyers. (modafinil online cheap) This strategy of using memories to promote situational awareness is also effective for these future buyers. As Heath says, The brand that is remembered is the brand that is bought.

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