Many, many new ‘P’s to deal with the marketing and media team ecosystem. People, Partnerships, Processes, Procurement. And of course, it’s all ultimately about the all important P for Performance. Today a large part of this performance P comes with a suffix to become Performance marketing.
With all these ‘P’s to be managed, the media and marketing fraternity is saddled with significant and complex challenges that need to be addressed. What adds to the complexity is that these marketing decisions often end up getting the Ps to be at loggerheads with each other. Relationally decisions could be leading to actions that are inversely proportional, contradictory, and counterproductive in nature for one P Vs the other. Having to operate at extremes leads to a paradoxical media state.
Here are 5 key trends as the broad spaces that bring alive this Media Paradox :
- Major Marketing = Performance Marketing: There's no denying Performance marketing plays a vital role in today’s marketing landscape. With measurable outcomes, accountability and cost efficiency, performance marketing empowers businesses to achieve tangible results. Several industry studies highlight that majority of (70%+) digital spends are now focused on performance marketing. This essentially means the higher chunk of brand investments are directed to performance and not so much for brand building.
- Funnels are on the efficacy decline: Clearly, the effectiveness marketing funnels are stagnating. In the initial stages, performance marketing funnel offered great ROI for brands– (perhaps on account several reasons – like an initial limited operating scale, low competition, consumer habits, category etc). However over time, the continued constant dredging at the same shallow end, obviously the resource pool is gradually declining. The lack of sufficient initiatives to harvest and renew the resource pool and falling ROIs are pushing up acquisition costs, making investment decision challenging.? [What this implies: if we add up Point 1 & 2, it indicates that while performance marketing attracts higher share of spends, it is witnessing lower returns]
- Media Marketing Success = Art of Creativity + Science of Data: This narrative may not be something we have not heard before. From multiple knowledge forums , industry studies, surveys and forecasts, the writing on the wall is clear. Future trends suggests that for successful marketing, brands riding on media will require seamless synergy of creativity and data. Today more than ever before, there is a higher need for great storytelling . For brand stories to be most effective, they will require a deeper understanding of who they are meant for, their objective and purpose and even how they must be told.
- Best brand story telling = People Partnership: Look back to any past or present brand marketing initiative that got your attention. The key reason for it to have worked would be the result of great team synergy between the marketing and media expert teams. If we distil this down to core aspects, very clearly great team partnerships have defined the most successful for brands. But while team partnership continues to be a critical to success, in the current marketing paradigm, it does not always garner the priority, importance and attention that it deserves.
- Performance focused Categories now concentrate on building brand dominance: Interestingly and to the great surprise of many, the early adopters to the powerful brand building are categories that are known to be performance focused.? Today driven with a larger vision, categories like eCommerce, QSR, Real Estate, Banking and Financial Services are prominent, consistent and innovative with brand building initiatives and investment.
The path to success however is not as easy as it may seem. The way forward may appear simple in theory, but practical implementation is challenging. With these manifold priorities crying for the attention and investment from business leaders, navigating the right course in paradoxical situations is quite a tight rope walk.
Marketing heads are in a constant battle of getting to the right answers and prioritization. Taking these decisions is never easy and then once decisions taken, are under constant criticism and scrutiny. To succeed in the battle, its crucial to to find the optimal balance.
Having supported leading brands in this journey, can confidently say the winners are those who master how to strike the right balance . Working together helped to arrive at answers for questions like:
- How much is enough >What is the optimal investment requirement?
- Should investment in performance marketing continue with lower ROI to manage sales targets?
- How do leverage strategy and innovation to make our investments work harder?
- How to create stakeholder conviction on brand building investment/ROI?
- How do we inspire and ensure competent partnerships?
- How do we integrate and align multiple media partners?
- How should the decide the split of media investment?
- How should success be measured?
- How should mandatory process requirements be incorporated?
- How to keeps costs in control?
- How to track and control flawless implementation
Numerous questions need the right answers to support decisions in this journey. If you are looking for answers to arrive at the right balance, am happy to help??
Please reach out to me at [email protected]
?Authored by Deepak Netram, Independent Marketing Consultant, Founder, Dreamforce Associates, enabling brands to enhance tangible impact.
