If I think of the brands I’ve been working with or consulting with over the past few years, most of them in the B2B technology area, the main priority has always been to activate short-term sales . We B2B marketers often call it lead generation .
I had a similar priority when Nigerian Email Database I led marketing for a large company’s energy division.
The focus was not on the brand . Short-term activation campaigns and sales programs were successful in most cases. At least, that’s what I (and most marketers) think.
The short term effects on marketing
As I mentioned, marketers are increasingly focused on the short term. They spend money on activating immediate sales rather than building a brand over the long term. They opt for bottom of the funnel tactics because they will pay better, in a year, in most cases.
But in one of the most important pieces of research, Field and Banet demonstrate that, in the long run, this short-sighted view will quickly deteriorate the overall impact of marketing. A lot of time spent picking the lowest fruit means less time to water the tree. Eventually, it stops growing.
Plus, distracted by a continuous stream of short-term data, marketers won’t realize anything is going to go wrong. And when they do, it might be too late. There are other notable findings mentioned in recent research:
online brands tend to seek short-term sales activation effects more than offline brands due to customer availability;
brands in categories with high volume of online searches (financial services, durable goods, etc.) tend to follow brands online and seek short-term sales trigger effects because it is easier to trigger responses; Subscription-based sales brand marketers (eg, mobile network operators and software) have lowered brand-building communications spend.
Based on my experience, I would add that most B2B technology brands tend to prioritize short-term strategies due to the easier availability of online customers. The digital revolution often leads to increased activation efficiency and therefore a larger proportion must go to the brand. It sounds paradoxical, but what’s happening in the digital world means you need to build that brand even more,” says Banet.
“Online brands that sell to or reach an online audience need a higher percentage of their spending going to brand building because they already have direct channels for conversion . Digital realization is leading to greater distribution efficiency, so more emphasis needs to be placed on the brand.”
The same goes for those in high-volume online search, technology, subscription-based categories, and for all companies that have neglected long-term brand recognition strategies .
The role of content and storytelling in this context
Consequently, content production has focused primarily on the bottom of the funnel and product (or service) focused content to support short-term sales activation programs.
In most cases, a solid and documented content strategy was neither requested nor implemented. You don’t need it to run short-term sales activation campaigns.
Field and Banet advise a combined brand recognition and sales activation strategy to achieve maximum marketing effectiveness. They advise a split for optimal impact across many different categories .
This means you should invest at least of your budget on long-term brand recognition and on more immediate sales activation. And there may be variation in this value for each sector. List Provider For example, the financial sector is where brand building is most important.
Brand communications create lasting memory structures that increase the base level of demand and reduce price sensitivity. Enabling sales triggers those memories and efficiently converts them into immediate sales,” says Banet.
Brand building and sales activation are not choices or alternatives. They are mutually interdependent and both are essential for long-term success.
The authors explain that sales activation marketing is about increasing physical availability and works best through tight targeting and relevant messaging.
