Not For the Faint-Hearted...

Here’s an interesting one for you Marketeers out there. A client I had at ACE Marketing recently was in a unique position. Their brand had suffered from almost a decade of zero marketing to the point where market perception was in a major deficit. They were starting from a negative position. So major work needed to be done to even get to ground zero. It is even more interesting that they were about to embark on a transformation to become a new brand within a year.

Internally the executive team was conflicted, as always you have the ones who control the purse strings who are traditionally of the mindset that there should be as little spending as possible. These people always seem to believe that marketing is hard to justify. Luckily the number men, when presented with detailed performance marketing plans that yield tangible ROAS are usually pleased. However, the returns are not always necessarily sales in situations like these, the intangible part is also important, and this is the turning of the perception tides.

Yes, the traffic to the website was on the up, and yes social media followers and applause rate were on the rise, but actual sales seemed to be elusive. The knee-jerk reaction in situations like these is to immediately cut the advertising spend because “last year we weren’t doing any marketing and the revenue was the same”.

This is a fatal flaw, as not only does it unravel the good work that was done in the couple of months of work in which actual marketing work was done, with influencers and performance marketing campaigns, but it further damages the image of the brand. The stuttering stop-start approach conveys a lack of confidence and places the current brand as a very weak incumbent to the upcoming “new” brand which is coming in to uplift the business entirely with its global weight and presence.

Business owners, clients, and executive management teams must have faith in the process by committing to a journey of building momentum. Damage done over many years of brand mismanagement cannot be undone through one or two marketing campaigns. Stop-start marketing will only damage a brand's position further.

One year of consistent omnichannel marketing efforts to build a strong base will lead to long-term success, short-sightedness may be good as tactical fixes and sales curve corrections, but in the long term, success can only be achieved by a clear vision at the very top of organizations and a belief that what the brand has to offer will overcome any past difficulties. This is not for the faint-hearted.

Let me know what you think, or if you’ve experienced similar situations before.

I have drawn this chart to illustrate the point in my article. It is a theoretical chart, to highlight my view that consistent marketing spend/effort, will result in a compounding growth in positive market perception over time, without necessarily increasing spend.