A Seth Godin-ism on marketing that I could use a place for future reference. When asked about clarity of purpose, Seth flipped it to three questions.

Awareness is recognition. It’s somebody knowing you exist. That’s a fine starting point for any brand.

Proxies are measurements. It’s deciding what you count. Not all proxies are created equally, which is extra important because of the next bit -

Actions are the ultimate final step. They’re the buying (or selling) decision. Inspiring an action is the ultimate decider of a brand’s power because it takes the feeling the brand represents and turns it into an outcome.

What you don’t want to do is confuse one for another. Which he, of course, also explains.

When Wendy’s does funny stuff on social media, it’s great for awareness. It might even be OK for proxies, to the degree they’re differentiating something particular to the brand from competitors, and awareness ultimately translates to sales.

But, what funny social media stuff will not do in any clear or obvious way is sell burgers or Frosty’s.

And that’s totally ok, you just have to think of it.

if the proxy is social media engagement, the awareness might be fine. But if the proxy is actions like sales, the proxy might be the totally wrong thing to focus on.

Likewise, if you are cooking up amazing burgers in your neighborhood, and let’s imagine your kids are passing them out and when people ask, “Who made these” they just say “my dad” but nobody knows who the kids or the dad is (ok this is a weird example, but you get the idea I hope) - you’re all action, you have no really proxy defined, and you’re stuck with zero awareness of who you are.

These stack, is the point.

On one end you want people to know you exist.

On the other end you want people to know how to place an order.

In the middle you want people to measure the right stuff for the outcome you’re after.

For Wendy’s - that means having the snarky social media presence, making regular commentary and product positioning claims about the competition, and offering coupons or incentives to buy, wherever and however possible. You have to track both sides. You have to make sure they matter to each other, in some semi-tangible way.

For you and your burgers - that means making sure people know you’re making the burgers in the first place, making a fuss about how special and non-fast-food they are as a point of differentiation, and then plugging along with more sales to follow. You have a set of metrics that will drive everything. You have to set and pick the right ones, just like Wendy’s, adjusted for your ambitions.

You never want to measure stuff that doesn’t matter under the assumption it does matter.

You don’t want to just assume more social media awareness will lead to more sales, or that more sales will lead to more social media awareness, and especially not that any one variable can fix or solve all the others without an honest plan.

3 strategies. Always.