FOLLOWING THESE 12 PRINCIPLES IS AS CLOSE AS YOU’LL EVER GET TO A SURE THING IN MARKETING.
While there’s no such thing as guaranteed results from marketing, this article outlines an evidence-based approach that is as close to a silver bullet as anything out there. In fact, I’ll venture to claim it’s the most surefire way to grow any company. What’s more, it’s faster and cheaper than what others preach. Perhaps the most surprising thing about this silver bullet is it’s nothing new. It isn’t AI or any other new marketing technology. In fact it’s just a list of twelve basic marketing principles. But together, these twelve principles have been proven to work over time and through both experience and rigorous research. Before I reveal the list, allow me to set the stage by providing some context as to why these principles have more power today than ever.
Unlike scientists, who build theories and laws upon the evidence, each new generation of marketers tend to discard all historical marketing learning that came before them and start from scratch. Despite over a hundred years of evidence-based research supported by hundreds of thousands of case studies proving what works and what doesn’t, we throw it all away and start from zero every 20 years or so. This inability to build upon proven knowledge from the past, the constant reinvention of marketing terminology and the never-ending pursuit of the the next trendy tactic has wreaked havoc on our reputations as a legitimate and respected profession. (Marketing practitioners rank lower than used car salesmen and politicians in global opinion polls.)
And so here we are today.
About 15 years ago the marketing pendulum swung from an industry based on creative brand-building supported by research and direct marketing to its exact inverse. Common sense and irrefutable evidence be damned, the marketing industry has transformed into a very minor subset of itself - direct marketing. Now don’t get me wrong. I love direct marketing and consider it to be a necessary part of maximizing advertising effectiveness. The operative word is part. While the evidence shows most companies should invest no more than 40% of their budgets into direct marketing, the vast majority are investing 70 -100% of their budgets into bottom of the funnel direct marketing tactics. So for all intents and purposes, the entire business of marketing has become the business of direct marketing.
This was never the right approach. Overspending on direct tactics to convert a very small minority of your marketplace, many of who would have bought your brand anyway - is just a bad idea.
Never in the history of marketing have so many otherwise smart practitioners made such a bone-headed move.
Despite the noble efforts of those with much bigger brains and influence than mine - Bob Hoffman, Mark Ritson, Byron Sharp, Jenni Romaniuk and Les Binet and Peter Field, to name a few, way too many advertisers and agency folks are worshipping at the altar of short-term direct sales. Far too many have fallen victim to the groundless guidance and dubious decrees of self-proclaimed marketing gurus, ad ninjas and growth hackers. Literally billions of dollars have been blown on an insatiable hunger for short-term sales, data collection, direct-to-consumer tactics and cheap impressions - all under the ironically named initiatives like performance marketing and sales activation. And don’t even get me started on the immoral use and abuse of personal data. All at the expense of brand building that delivers real and sustainable long-term growth.
Read More: Busting The BS: 13 Marketing Myths Debunked
All despite the fact we have decades of experience, research and evidence to the contrary.
We know over-investing in targeted, short-term sales activation tactics (direct marketing) in lieu of mass, long-term brand building ones is hazardous to business health. Reams of recent studies unequivocally prove it. Yet instead of pulling back from short-term tactics, marketers continue to double down on them. Seems the instant gratification of short-term sales for marketing directors desperate for results right freaking now is just too enticing to pass up for long-term growth later.
And who can really blame them?
The C-suite is under tremendous pressure to deliver quarterly results. Pretty much everything you read on and offline about marketing applauds short-termism. In a breathtaking alliance of deception, agencies, marketing media and martech have sucked the fun and profits out of advertising by convincing marketers the bulleted bunkum below is true:
• Martech and the Internet have made advertising more effective
• Old-school, mass market, traditional advertising isn’t effective anymore
• Online, highly targeted, direct to consumer advertising is most effective
• New online technologies have made TV, radio, outdoor and print obsolete
• Creativity is overrated
• 100% of your ad budget should be invested in online tactics like social media, content marketing, influencer marketing, retargeting, SEO, SEM, voice search, AI, virtual reality, etc.
• Short-term sales activation is more effective than long-term brand building
• Highly-targeted, personalized one-to-one messaging outperforms mass messaging
• Integrated, long-term, creative brand building campaigns are a waste of money
While short-term marketing efforts can generate positive ROI at relatively low-levels of spend, they do so at the expense of much larger long-term growth.
None of the above is true.
Despite the problems this misinformation has caused the unenlightened marketer, it has also created a huge opportunity for those of us who know better. As more and more marketers pour more and more of their budgets and efforts into unproven and less effective tactics, it’s time for us to zig to higher growth and profits. Let everyone else zag to ho-hum creative, lackluster results and lost brand equity.
Now before I go further, I want to make one thing perfectly clear. I am not and have never been anti online advertising or direct marketing. Unlike the digital first and mobile first crowd, whose very names expose their bias to online tactics and a short-term approach, Immortology subscribes to a 100% agnostic, evidence based approach to the tactics and channels we choose. The only thing that matters to us is what mix of media and tactics will most likely deliver the biggest reach, deepest market penetration and more fame and fortune for the dollar. Which means our recommendations almost always include a combination of online and traditional offline channels. (See Principles #7 and #8 below to find out why.)
Research evidence clearly shows that in order to maximize growth and profits, you need to run two types of marketing campaigns simultaneously.
One that grows brand awareness, familiarity, interest and ultimately demand over the long-term…
…And one that harvests demand from those who are ready to buy right now
To yield the very best results, most of your budget should be invested in a creative campaign that grows long-term demand through a mix of mass reach channels. Problem is, the majority of marketers continue to put more of their budgets into bottom of the funnel, short-term, online tactics that harvest demand.
That’s because – in general - bottom of the funnel tactics are more efficient at harvesting short-term sales and measuring results than long-term brand building tactics. In an effort to harvest as many short-term sales as possible, marketers have created what Bartle Bogle Hegarty’s Will Lion calls “the efficiency bubble”. In the process, marketers are doing the direct opposite of what they thing they’re doing - they’re making advertising less effective. Why? The correlation between efficiency and effectiveness in marketing is weak at best. By putting most of their eggs into the efficiency basket most marketers are giving up tons of profits in opportunity costs by not investing in more effective top of the funnel and middle of the funnel long-term tactics.
READ RORY SUTHERLAND’S BRILLIANT TAKE ON THE EFFICIENCY BUBBLE HERE.
There are oodles of agencies, media platforms, marketing gurus, data analytics companies and media buyers with a huge vested interest in convincing you short-term, data-driven, hyper-targeted, direct marketing tactics are best. And their propaganda is working. While advertising spend on long-term, growth building, demand generating campaigns through online and traditional channels is decreasing or flat, online short-term, direct sales advertising continues to grow way beyond its ability to generate a decent return. Despite the hype, the truth is long-term, brand building campaigns stimulate online search and increase short-term sales. Short-term, demand harvesting campaigns only produce short-term sales and have no effect on growing long or short-term demand. Once you stop running them, sales dry up immediately. An orange farmer can’t expect to harvest more oranges without first investing in growing them. Planting, watering, pruning, fertilizing and protecting the groves of trees that produce the oranges year after year.
Orange farmers would eventually go bankrupt if all they did was harvest. To ensure future growth, they spend most of their time planting new trees and watering and maintaining older ones to ensure abundant crops year after year.
Targeted, (mainly online) sales activation ads are efficient at generating short-term sales. Mass market, long-term (mainly offline) brand building ads are more effective over the long-term. You need both to maximize return.
So now you have the context, here are 12 timeless marketing principles that together are as close to an advertising silver bullet as there’s ever been.
Strategy first, tactics second. Ignore at your brand’s peril.
Principle #1: Make an Unassailable Promise
THE MORE YOUR BRAND STRATEGY IS CENTERED AROUND A PROMISE THAT DELIVERS WHAT YOUR CUSTOMERS WANT AND NEED IN WAYS YOUR RIVALS CAN’T OR WON’T, THE MORE LIKELY YOUR MARKETING WILL BE SUCCESSFUL.
Strategy first. Tactics and execution second and third. This is Immortology’s mantra. Perhaps the most widespread marketing mistake I see clients making is the abandonment of brand strategy. With our always on economy and the desire to be a fast mover there is a growing and loud philosophy that says it’s more important to do than to plan. Yes, doing is absolutely critical but doing without first strategizing why, for whom, how and what you expect to achieve in both the long and short term is like firing a gun and then aiming it.
Brand strategies are only successful when you understand, gain consensus on and focus on centering your business around your customers’ needs. The simplest way to do this is to define your business purpose as the promise you make to your customers.
Your promise is the heart and soul of your strategy. The rest of your strategy will define:
Your business objectives (long + short)
Who you want to know about it
Why your customers will believe it
How you will disseminate it and maximize reach
Why it differentiates you from your rivals
It all really boils down to this.
Your BRAND promise CENTERS YOUR BUSINESS AROUND DELIVERING WHAT your customers really want AND need IN WAYS YOUR COMPETITORS CAN’T OR WON’T.
Sounds easy enough. It’s not.
A great brand promise is really an operating system that centers your entire business around fulfilling your customers’ needs. It should answer why you're in business and drive everything you do.
Great brand strategies inspire your agency to create an impossible to ignore and hard to forget integrated communications campaign that earns an unfair share of atttention across, paid, earned and owned media. It simultaneously rallies employees to create legendary brand experiences through every customer touchpoint on and offline. Companies with great brand strategies have:
Better products and services
Better employee morale
Higher productivity
Better customer service
Better long-term stability
Better advertising
Less employee turnover
Easier, less expensive recruiting
More positive publicity
Easier decision-making
Smaller media spends to acquire the same or better results
Happier customers
Perceived higher values
Higher profit margins than their competitors
In our experience, most agencies and marketers are at best only paying lip service to developing great brand strategies. Here are the steps you need to take to be successful. They’re iterative, so skipping steps or completing them out of order will not work.
1. Know Your Customers
It’s not enough to know who they are, where they live and what they like. You need to do the appropriate research to find out that one thing they want, need and are willing to pay a premium for that your brand can uniquely satisfy and own. (Most of the time this is a solution to a problem they have.) We find research works best when you:
Analyze first, second and third-party data to uncover actionable insights (first-party data is your customers, secod-party is your team, third-party is other category research)
Pursue hypotheses about these insights through in-person or online qualitative research
Test and confirm your hypotheses through statistically viable quantitative research and third-party research
To find out how Immortology uncovers insights you can use to dramatically grow your business, click here.
2. Know Your Competitors
You need to study their strengths, their weaknesses and understand which ones are real threats and why people choose them over you. You need to understand their unique position in the market so you can truly differentiate yourself from it. But most of all you need to know what their Achilles heel is - the thing they are unwilling or unable to do that your customers want and/or need that you can actually do profitably. To find out more about how we can help you find the competitive intelligence you need to grow your business, click here.
3. Know Yourself
Self-analysis is hard and you’re going to need to hire an objective third-party to help you with this one. You’ll need to codify your long and short-term business objectives and make sure they’re realistic for the market you’re in and the budget you have to spend. You’ll need to define your core values and honestly assess your strengths and weaknesses. You’ll need to define why your company exists and who you really want to be when you grow up. You’ll need to compare and contrast these findings to make sure they don’t conflict with what your customers really want and need and you’re not too similar to your competitors. To find out how we can help you take a good hard look at yourself – warts, opportunities and all – click here.
The key to any long-term brand-building strategy is to find your Higher Business Purpose. We define your Higher Business Purpose as the one thing your business can deliver more profitably than your rivals that people really want and need which your competitors can’t or won’t.
4. Find & Articulate Your Ultimate Business Promise
So after you’ve completed Steps 1, 2 & 3 it’s time figure out your Brand Promise. This is the most important step because your Promise is like a mini business plan that will center your company around fulfilling your promise and drive and guide everything your brand says and does moving forward. When we say Brand Promise, we’re not referring to a pie in the sky, Kum Ba Ya, save the world kind of promise. No what we’re talking about is defining how your company can profitably make people’s lives better that’s different and better than your competitors. In essence it synthesizes all the learning about your business, your competitors and your customers into a powerful statement that acts like a mission statement and value proposition on steroids. Warning. Seek the help of a professional on this one. To see a few Brand Promise statements we’ve written click here.
5. Gain Consensus
OK, so now you have valuable customer insights, you know your competition, you understand yourself and have defined your Higher Business Purpose. The next step is to make absolutely sure the key stakeholders in your company will commit to the brand platform you created. Verbal agreement is not enough. All stakeholders must sign a pledge that they believe in it and will support it. Then you’ll need to follow-up every quarter and measure what percentage of your company employees and customers know and understand your purpose. As the percentages rise, so will your market share.
6. Create A Master Plan To Fulfill Your Higher Business Purpose
This is where you develop a strategic plan, an integrated media plan and creative ideas to bring your Higher Business Purpose to life. These three items are combined in a master schedule for the calendar year called an Integrated Marketing Communications Plan or IMC for short. Your IMC plan should be reviewed every quarter and revised to adapt to market and business changes/opportunities.
• An Overarching Creative Brief defining specific goals, key messaging, desired actions, prioritized tactics, mandatories, overall budget, etc. This document will guide and inspire every brand communication project you pursue.
• Tactical Briefs for each paid, earned or owned medium defining target, desired actions, target/media specific key messages. Based on the Overarching Creative Brief, Tactical Briefs define specific goals and actions for a particular marketing tactic.
• An IMC (Integrated Marketing Communications) Plan is a calendar, media plan and marketing plan for a year rolled up into one document with the following information:
All marketing tactics
Internal deadlines
Production deadlines
Media deadlines, placements and runs
Analysis & performance deadlines
One of the most well-researched and important books on
marketing ever. How Brands Grow: Part 2 adds the latest evidence-based performance findings to the mix.
Principle #2: Differentiate & Distinguish
THE MORE DIFFERENTIATED AND DISTINCTIVE YOUR BRAND, THE MORE LIKELY YOUR CUSTOMERS WILL NOTICE, RECOGNIZE, RECALL AND REDEEM YOUR PRODUCT OR SERVICE.
In How Brands Grow, Byron Sharp makes a compelling case for having distinct brand assets and consistently activating them across as many consumer touchpoints as possible. Your brand assets should deliver consistent sensory (sight, sound, taste, touch, smell) and verbal cues that make your brand more recognizable and easier to remember. They include:
Logos
Taglines
Business Cards
Emal Signatures
Signage
Fonts
Colors
Tone of Voice
Sounds
Scents
Textures
Mascots/Characters
Packaging
Claims
Proprietary, Patented and/or Trademarked ingredients, processes and other intellectual property
While having distinctive brand assets is necessary, way too many brands are implementing Dr. Sharp’s findings at the expense of differentiating their brands. Distinctive brands have brand assets that people easily recognize. Differentiated brands, on the other hand, are perceived as being better than their rivals in a meaningful way. For example Target has a distinctive mark that well, looks like a red target. Disney is different from other theme parks and entertainment companies in that it is unrelentingly focused on delivering “magical experiences” that make its customers feel like a child again no matter their age. It also has a distinctive mark – Cinderella’s castle underscored by Walt Disney’s playful signature. And while differentiation has probably been oversold in the past, it is still a vitally important and worthwhile objective. At Immortology, we’ve always preached that brands should aspire to be both distinctive and different from their rivals. We’re not alone. We highly encourage you to read the following articles by Tom Roach and Mark Ritson who both have written very convincing and entertaining articles on why all brands should be both different and distinct.
READ TOM ROACH’S ARTICLE “THE STUPIDITY OF SAMENESS AND THE VALUE OF DIFFERENCE” HERE
Bottom line. A brand that is both different and distinct will more likely be noticed, recognized, remembered and purchased by people when they’re ready to buy. Recognizable brands are 70% more likely to get purchased than ones that are not. Brands that are perceived to be uniquely different than their competitors produce 38% more revenue and have 61% higher profits than brands who are not perceived as uniquely different.
Broad reaching campaigns that target the entire category market, produce more large, positive effects from advertising than those with narrower targets.
Principle #3: REach Everyone
THE MORE PEOPLE YOUR ADVERTISING REACHES AND INFLUENCES, THE MORE LIKELY YOUR BUSINESS WILL GROW.
Despite what you’ve heard, tightly defined targeting can and probably will stunt your growth. Here’s why. The biggest source of growth for most companies comes from new and infrequent purchasers. So if you want to grow sales, you need to grow your customer base. Duh. Now while that sounds ridiculously obvious, it’s almost the direct opposite of what most marketers are doing. Instead of trying to reach and acquire a variety of new customers, they stubbornly focus their advertising on a narrow subset of the category - tightly defined, well-segmented groups of people they believe are their “ideal” customers and most likely to buy now.
Research has proven over and over again that this will not grow your business.
To grow you must increase your brand’s market penetration. And to grow your market penetration you must continually and consistently increase brand awareness, memorability and consideration with as many different people as possible. Which simply means, you can’t grow penetration without reaching and influencing lot of new potential buyers through your marketing.
Still skeptical?
Consider the 95:5 Rule. Research from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, concludes the percentage of people who are in-market and ready to buy any product or service in any category at any given time is only around 5%. The other 95% ar out of market.
Smart marketers focus on reaching the 95% of buyers who are out of market to increase the probability their brands will come to mind first when they come into market. Instead of hyper-targeting the 5%, broadly target the 5% and the 95%. Target the category and reach all potential buyers.
Think about that.
Put another way, 95% of potential buyers are always out of market. 95% of potential buyers don’t need your product or service now and probably won’t for weeks, months or even years. Which means, no matter how hard you try to sell them they’re not going to buy. If you’ve just bought a new car, nothing will get you to buy another one unless you need two new cars. Ditto for anything else you can think of. What’s more, 70% of the 5% who are ready to buy will choose a brand they know when given a choice. So if you’re not a brand people are familiar with, you’ll be duking it out with other lesser known brands for the remaining 30% of that 5% who are ready to buy.
Ugg. So what can you do?
In How Brands Grow, Byron Sharp’s research proves growth is directly correlated to increasing the reach of your advertising and penetration of your product. So, if your goal is to grow you should:
Reach as many people as you can through marketing to grow awareness consideration and ultimately penetration.
Increase your distribition through as many on and offline channels as possible to make finding and acquiring your product or service as easy as possible.
Wanna outperform your rivals? Make sure you shoot for fame with all your communications.
One of many eyeball grabbing ads Immortology created for the Museum Of Life + Science.
Principle #4: Be Impossible to Ignore
THE MORE PEOPLE WHO NOTICE YOUR ADVERTISING, THE MORE LIKELY IT WILL BE EFFECTIVE.
An estimated 84% of advertising is ignored – so just being noticed is a huge advantage. That’s why the number one priority of advertising should be to attract as much attention as possible. Instead of being afraid your ad won’t be liked, be afraid it won’t be noticed.
A million impressions is 100% meaningless if it generates 0% attention. Every single piece of communication you put out there from your business card to your your social media ads to your TV spots should aim for maximum attention. Data from The Long & Short Of It by Les Binet & Peter Field shows that aiming for fame – making more people notice, remember and become familiar with your brand – can massively enhance revenue and growth.
Here’s a simple goal we shoot for with all our communications. Make sure it is the most interesting, entertaining or informative thing in the environment or media channel in which it will appear - or start over.
The most powerful search engine in the world is the human mind. The more memorable your advertising, the more likely people will recall your brand and purchase it when they’re ready to buy.
Principle #5: Be hard to forget
THE MORE PEOPLE WHO REMEMBER YOUR ADVERTISING, THE MORE EFFECTIVE IT WILL LIKELY BE.
While getting noticed is critical, getting remembered is equally crucial. If every single person in your market notices your advertising but only a few remember your brand, your advertising is a failure. The most underutilized search engine in the world is the human mind. Companies that figure out how to get inside more brains and stay there - win.
As we like to say, it’s not who you know, it’s who knows you.
To maximize effectiveness your advertising must clearly differentiate your brand from competitors in a meaningfully distinct and emotional way. The more distinct and surprising your advertising, the more memorable it will be. The more memorable your ad, the less you have to spend on running them multiple times and the more likely people will choose your brand over one they don’t remember when it’s time to buy.
It takes 5 -7 impressions for people to remember an average brand. A great ad can reduce that number to just one or two impressions. The goal for any brand in any category should be to become the first brand people think of when a need for the solution it offers arises. If your product or service is not in the top three most recalled brand names in your category you’re leaving big money on the table. What’s more brand memorability drives search - not vice versa. For example, Nike is so famous for its running shoes and basketball shoes, people don’t find them by searching for basketball shoes or running shoes, they search for Nike running shoes not running shoes or Air Jordans. What’s more, because Amazon is not only a marketplace, it’s a big, giant search engine, the memorable ads you create outside of Amazon drive search and sales for your product on Amazon. Bottom line, the most important search engine in the world is not online - it’s peoples’ brains. The efforts you put into making your brand stick in peoples’ memories will pay off big time.
In generating sales, advertising creativity is by far the most important factor.
Principle #6: demand creativity
THE MORE CREATIVE YOUR ADVERTISING, THE MORE LIKELY IT WILL BE NOTICED, SHARED, REMEMBERED AND GENERATE GROWTH.
People don’t hate advertising. They hate boring, unoriginal and pushy advertising. And according to most people, the majority of ads they see are all the above. Having advertising that people actually welcome and enjoy is a huge competitive advantage. And the ads that people welcome and enjoy are creative ones.
Research has unequivocally proven, people pay more attention to creative ads, remember them longer, talk about them more and are less likely to get tired of them after multiple views. Clients who utilize them spend less on media and generate more sales with the same or less money. According to research conducted by Peter Field for the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA), creative ads are 11 times more efficient at selling stuff than other ads. What’s more, consumers have more positive feelings about companies and their products that utilize more creative advertising.
In fact, according to a recent study by Nielson and Nielson Catalina Solutions creativity beats both reach and targeting in driving sales, accounting for 47% of an ad’s impact. The same study also found that creativity outperforms the media channel selected - which only contributes 30% to sales lift.
One more thing. Don’t shy away from using humor. Research by Kantar found that humor is “the most powerful creative enhancer of receptivity…humorous ads are more expressive, more involving and more distinct.” Yet, only 33% of the ads Kantar has researched are humorous while half of the Kantar Creative Effectiveness Award winners use it.
If at all possible, integrate your advertising across 5 different platforms for maximum memorability and saIes lift.
Principle #7: Be On More Platforms
THE MORE MEDIA PLATFORMS YOUR AD CAMPAIGN RUNS ON, THE HIGHER THE MEMORABILITY AND SALES LIFT.
If you’re only running ads on one or two media channels, you’re leaving money on the table. A massive study by the Advertising Research Foundation concluded that each additional channel a campaign runs on increases ROI. Five channel campaigns are ideal with a 35% higher ROI than one channel campaigns. What’s more, seeing a brand advertised on different media channels engages long-term memorability.
Principle #8: Be ConsistentLY Consistent
THE MORE YOUR KEY BRAND MESSAGE IS CONSISTENTLY INTEGRATED ACROSS ALL MEDIA, THE MORE POWERFUL IT WILL BE.
One of the biggest issues with a short-term, direct approach to advertising is it tends to generate lots of inconsistent messaging in an attempt to reach and connect with disparate groups of people. This inconsistency in messaging inherently leads to confusion and can destroy any positive impact. A recent study by the ARF called How Advertising Works Today found “campaigns with varied creative strategies can actually cancel each other out and become less memorable”. Multi-media campaigns unified by a central creative idea and message, executed in surprising and entertaining ways with a consistent look and feel are 57% more effective than those that are not. Here’s what we mean by that. If you really want to see better results make sure your advertising campaign is united by a central creative idea and key message. (Think Dos Equis’ The Most Interesting Man In The World or Allstate’s Mayhem campaigns.) A Kantar Millward Brown study found campaigns unified by a strong central creative idea and message perform 64% better across all brand KPIs.
Campaigns that are unified by a consistent and highly creative message are 57% more effective.
To maximize growth and revenue, you need to have both Brand Building and Sales Activation campaigns running simultaneously. Most of your budget should be invested in Brand Building.
Principle #9: Balance Short-term + Long-term tactics
TO MAXIMIZE GROWTH YOU MUST FIND THE IDEAL BALANCE BETWEEN SHORT-TERM, DIRECT DEMAND HARVESTING ADS AND LONG-TERM, BRAND BUILDING, DEMAND GENERATING ADS.
Long-term, brand-building campaigns that shoot brand fame are best at generating demand. Short-term, direct marketing campaigns that target people who are ready to buy are best at harvesting demand. You need both to maximize revenue and growth. This is as close as we’ve ever been to having a Unified Theory of Advertising. According to the Advertising Research Foundation, the optimal media mix for maximizing advertising effectiveness for most businesses is 78% traditional and 22% online. Problem is, most advertisers have this completely assbackwards by putting the vast majority of their advertising spends behind online direct marketing efforts (demand harvesting) as opposed to offline brand building efforts (demand generation). That’s not to say you can’t build brands through online advertising and you can’t get direct sales through offline channels like print, radio and TV. You absolutely can and we’ve done so for both. However, as a rule of thumb traditional advertising channels are still more efficient and effective at long-term brand building and generating real demand. Online channels and tactics are more effective at harvesting short-term demand.
Various recommended spend ratios for long-term brand-building vs. short-term sales activation (direct marketing) tactics.
In Effectiveness In Context, Les Binet and Peter Field present evidence that all brands need brand building and sales activation to maximize growth. Most companies should invest a minimum of 60% of their ad budgets into long-term, mass market, brand building campaigns and no more than 40% into direct, short-term sales activation tactics. However, the average business invests 72% of its budget into direct advertising channels – almost the direct opposite of what they should be doing. For companies that sell directly to customers/consumers through their own or third-party e-commerce site, the above ratios should be even more skewed towards offline, mass media like TV, radio, outdoor, print, etc. Remember, Principals #3 and #7. The more new potential buyers you reach and the more channels you run your advertising on, the more likely you’ll increase growth and revenue.
Still skeptical? Consider this. With all the targeting capability and data you can imagine, why doesn’t Facebook, Google, Amazon, Netflix, Microsoft and Apple just advertise online? Not not only do these brands spend heavily on traditional channels, they are all increasing their investments in long-term brand advertising via offline channels like TV, print, outdoor, radio and cinema advertising. Why? Because that’s where they’re able to reach more new potential customers.
Long-term, mass market advertising delivers bigger returns than short-term, narrowly focused campaigns.
Research shows the number of very large business effects and percentage of very large profit gains is directly related to holw long an ad campaign runs. Most ad campaigns run for 3 months or less. How crazy is that?
Principle #10: Don’t stop
THE LONGER A GOOD CAMPAIGN RUNS, THE MORE LIKELY YOU’LL SEE VERY LARGE, POSITIVE BUSINESS EFFECTS AND VERY LARGE PROFIT GAINS.
Research by Les Binet and Peter Field in Media In Focus – Marketing Effectiveness In The Digital Era prove short-term ad campaigns will leave you short-changed. Campaigns that run for at least six months generate much higher growth than those that run for less than 6 months. And campaigns that run for 3+ years outperform those who only run for one or two years. Brands that run long-term campaigns generate more brand memorability and familiarity, command higher prices, increase market penetration and are less sensitive to market downturns. Truth is, it takes a minimum of three months to start seeing results from an ad campaign and around 6 months to start generating a profit. One of the biggest mistakes we see marketers make is pulling investment from long-term brand building campaigns before they’ve had a chance to work in favor of short-term, sales harvesting campaigns. Remember, only 5% of buyers in any given category are ready, willing and able to buy right now. It’s a losing proposition to only go after them. You need to target your entire market and make as many people as possible aware of and familiar with your brand as possible. And that takes time but your patience will pay off big time.
Brands that clearly and memorably link Key Buying Occasions to their brand, are more likely to be purchased when those occasions arise in their potential buyers’ lives. To find out what your Key Buying Occasions are, answer the questions above about your potential customers. Better yet, have your customers answer them.
Principle #11: KNOW Your Purchase Triggers
THE MORE YOU INCORPORATE KEY BUYING OCCASIONS INTO YOUR ADVERTISING, THE MORE LIKELY PEOPLE WILL BUY YOUR PRODUCT OR SERVICE WHEN THESE OCCASIONS ARISE.
To maximize performance, advertising needs to work really hard in the memory department. While it’s a great start to get buyers to remember your brand, there’s one more thing it should do.
Your ads should clearly and memorably link your brand to Key Buying Occasions. (These are also know as Category Entry Points or CEPs.) Key Buying Occasions are the most relevant need states that trigger purchase. To find out your customers’ Key Buying Occasions answer each of the questions in graphic above. Better yet ask your customers to answer them.
Here’s why clearly linking your brand to Key Buying Occasions is so important.
Most marketers tend to believe advertising works by moving potential buyers from out-of-market to in-market. The fallacy that advertising moves people from potential buyers to buyers is best illustrated by the sales funnel. The reality is, ads don’t and really can’t move “out of market” people down through a sales funnel to purchase. As we mentioned in Principal #3, ads don’t and really can’t move people “out-of-market” to “in-market.” Only potential buyers can move themselves from “out of market” to “in-market”. They make these moves when key buying occasions arise that trigger a need to purchase a new product or service.
Therefore, one of the best things your advertising can do to increase sales is clearly and memorably link your brand to these occasions. So when one of these key buying occasions arise, your brand immediately comes to mind.
When advertisers were asked to rank the most effective advertising media, what they believed worked best is not remotely in line with what actually performs best. It’s just one of thousands of examples where the biases people have in advertising clash with reality.
Principle #12: Fulfill Your Promise
The biggest flop for Pepsi since the disastrous “Refresh Everything” campaign.
THE MORE YOU EMBRACE THE FACT THAT YOU AND YOUR AGENCY ARE NOT YOUR CUSTOMER, THE MORE LIKELY YOUR ADVERTISING WILL BE SUCCESSFUL.
The minute you become responsible for selling a brand or product, you lose your objectivity. And no matter how unbiased you think you are, you’re not. Trust me, it happens to the best of us. It’s why surgeons are not allowed to operate on their family members. It’s too personal. And when things get too personal in marketing, mistakes like Pepsi’s inadvertent social justice parody with Kendall Jenner happen.
As marketers, most of us live and work in a pretty tight little bubble. It is an echo chamber where dissenting voices of reason are often drowned out by a loud and myopic chorus of sheeple. Case and point, a recent study by Ebiquity called Re-evaluating Media found that marketing and agency pros have a personal bias towards the effectiveness of online media that simply doesn’t stand up to the evidence. They ranked online video, social media and online display higher than radio, newspapers and magazines even though the evidence proves otherwise. Knowing who your market is and understanding them from an unbiased, evidence-base point of view is called market orientation. Mark Ritson has written an in-depth article on this subject called The First Rule Of Marketing Is You Are Not The Customer that’s much more enlightening than my feeble crack at it here.
Eternally yours,
David Smith | Founder & Creative Leader
919.667.3717: c | 919.969.7500
david.smith@immortologyusa.com