As marketers, we all know how important impressions are. How many people saw your ad, social post, or campaign? It’s a number that’s easy to track and even easier to obsess over.
As more social platforms migrate to a pay-to-play strategy for reach and impressions, marketers have to be careful about interrogating the quality of those impressions. Simply appearing in the feeds of X amount of people isn’t enough to declare a brand victory. You need to drill down further to find out how consumers feel about the content and the brand.
The Illusion of Reach
In the age of “virality,” it’s easy to get caught up in scale. You want 500,000 views for a granola mix and a million views on a holiday cocktail recipe reel, but reach without resonance is an empty win.
A campaign with strong impressions and decent views may appear successful, but if it fails to generate a connection with the audience or inspire a desired action, we’ve still got our work cut out for us.
Of course, we want to reach a wide audience. Each new user our content reaches represents an opportunity for the brand. But we need to focus on creating and pushing content that makes the most of those new opportunities.
So what really matters? How You Make People Feel
When you are sitting down and going through metrics monthly or quarterly, instead of asking yourself as a food marketer, “how many people saw this?” Try to think of these pointers instead:
- How did this campaign or piece of content make people feel about our brand?
- Did it create an emotional spark?
- Are we just adding to the noise or breaking through it?
When someone feels something about your brand, whether it’s pride, comfort, or the feeling of nostalgia, you earn more than a moment of attention. You earn memory, and that can drive loyalty.
Feelings & Emotion Build Long-Term Brand Value
People don’t just buy food, they buy what it can communicate about them. They support brands that usually align with their values. They crave content that makes them feel inspired, cozy, healthy, and connected.
Impact is stronger than impressions. Even in situations where there is negative sentiment, this can be more valuable than delivering no sentiment.
If your audience doesn’t feel something when they see your content, it won’t matter how many millions saw it. You’ve just added another impression to an already overcrowded feed.
Your Brand Is More Than A Product
A strong food brand is more than a logo or tagline; it’s a personality, a mood, a feeling. The way a kid lights up when they see your ice cream in the freezer. The nostalgic feeling of a happy meal from McDonald’s. You can’t fake that with ad spend. You earn it with story, consistency, and care.
Impressions are a vanity metric unless backed by an emotional connection. Don’t just aim to be seen. Aim to be felt because of food marketing, reach might get you attention, but sentiment is what earns you loyalty.
