The four pillars of a long-term performance marketing strategy

Short-term thinking in marketing has a detrimental impact on both short-term and long-term results. Throughout my career working at performance marketing agencies, a consultancy, and with brands, I’ve seen first-hand how the imbalance between short-term and long-term thinking results in ineffective marketing and stunted growth.?

In this article, I’ll introduce the concept of a long-term performance marketing strategy and how this approach can drive significant growth for brands of all sizes.?

Why am I writing this?

Having moved to the Netherlands and knowing the power of a network, I set a resolution this year to build my personal and professional network.?

The trouble is, I’m not a great networker, at all. This article is a baby step in raising my profile in the marketing community (inside and outside of NL) and, with any luck, will strengthen my network.

I’m genuinely passionate about effective marketing, so I hope this article sparks some conversation and I can learn a thing or two along the way!

Performance Marketing attracts short-term thinking

The aim of a Performance Marketing team is to drive as much efficient, incremental demand as possible. In other words, use all the resources at your disposal to drive conversions that wouldn’t have happened anyway.

However, two common, significant challenges often present themselves. Short-term commercial targets and a lack of time.?

The need for short-term results has often led some marketers to flock to the most recent social trend, shiny new technology, or “growth hack.” Often at the detriment of long-term growth and the broader marketing strategy.

Fortunately, I’m seeing fewer mentions of “growth hacking” in our industry. Regardless, the short-term tactical mindset remains.

Short-term commercial targets aren’t going away, but a performance marketing strategy that includes long-term thinking can focus time-poor teams on the areas that drive the biggest positive impact on business growth.?

Introducing the four components of a long-term growth strategy - Measurement, Data, Technology & Creative

Many areas can drive growth, but the following four have proven time and time again to be the most impactful. They fall into a long-term strategy because they require high effort but deliver high rewards, sitting alongside day-to-day operational tasks.

Measurement

Marketing measurement is at the top of the list, and for good reason. Marketers need to know if they are driving growth and what those drivers are. Spoiler alert: It’s never one channel, tactic, or campaign.?

Strong marketing measurement also requires a shift in mindset from finding what looks good to what is good. This is hard, but the reward is massive.

Marketing teams should go beyond short-term measurement techniques such as attribution to create a short-, medium- and long-term view of what is driving growth. Tying these to business metrics is crucial, and in a future article, I’ll share how you can accomplish this across the full funnel.

Data

Closed ecosystems encourage advertisers to target less and rely on machine learning to do the heavy lifting. That doesn’t mean that first-party data isn’t valuable. In fact, it’s your competitive advantage. Especially in biddable media platforms.?

Digital marketing platforms use data and machine learning to identify the factors that drive a specific outcome. Performance marketers should focus on providing more factors to these platforms through customer data and, crucially, direct platforms to drive more relevant outcomes. E.g. High-lifetime-value conversions or profit.?

Digital ecosystems are constantly changing, and one of the most significant changes is the availability of user data. Tracking users across environments is becoming more difficult, so focus on how you can bring relevant, persistent user data to your platforms. Again, it’s hard and getting harder, but it’s certainly achievable.

Technology

Technologies promise advertisers that they can unlock growth by reaching the right user at the right time with the right message. The hard part is that there are thousands to choose from, and new technologies are popping up all the time.

Technologies should solve problems, not create them. This sounds obvious, but I often saw brands get so excited about new technology that they forgot about the specific problem it was trying to solve and how the technology could solve it.?

Data Management Platforms (DMPs) were a good example of this. Yes, they could connect many data sources together to create a single customer view, but they couldn’t structure the data on behalf of brands. This requires a huge amount of work and is absolutely essential for a single customer view.?

Marketing teams, performance or otherwise, should focus on defining the problem blocking growth and then really think about their technology requirements. What product features are most important? How much time is needed to operate the platform? What level of service is needed? What commercial structure suits you best??

Creative

Technology advancements are taking more control away from advertisers, and privacy leglislation is reducing the ability to reach specific audiences with specific messages.

However, advertisers still have control over their creative, which is arguably the largest contributor to campaign performance. Invest your time in creating on-brand content that is built for the platforms you advertise on that drives results, and that complements your brand activity.

Every brand is different, and every consumer is different. What resonates with one consumer won’t resonate with another, so test and test a lot. Different concepts, formats, messages, assets and elements. Giving your platforms options gives them more of those factors that I wrote about in the data section. The hard part is ensuring these creatives remain effective, consistent and on-brand.

Conclusion

Measurement, data, technology, and creative have the biggest positive impact on short-term and long-term growth. Invest in them alongside channel best practices and tactics, and you’ll be set for efficient, incremental advertising.

As mentioned above, I hope this sparks a conversation and brings new ideas/ opinions to the table. Look out for more in-depth articles on the four pillars of a long-term growth strategy.

Opinions expressed are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer.