The Line vs The Net

Recently I’ve been working on communication strategies for mature age startups with 4-8 years of proven success. 

Many share a common challenge:

After years of success using performance media on a narrowly defined target they begin to approach diminishing returns. They optimise an audience to the point where their target starts to look rather small and becomes over-exposed.

Leaving measurable and attributable digital performance media, where they’ve learnt exactly how much they need to spend to acquire a customer, can be daunting. My role with these startups is to deliver communication strategies that act as a framework to guide a brand from the online performance media they love and into the scary world of broad reach, brand advertising. 

Convincing a startup brand, who see wastage as the enemy and live and breathe data, to invest in media that can’t be tracked or directly attributed to sales in the short term is quite a challenge. I have found a way to explain the benefits of broad reach brand media that distils Sharpian theories of growth and makes them relevant for these startups. 

It’s a metaphor that combines my love for the commercial seafood world and communications strategy:

I call it The Line Vs The Net.

First, a quick lesson in two prominent methods of commercial fishing.

Line fishing is where fisherman will use a specific bait created to attract a specific fish they are targeting. The bait is attached to hooks on a long line which is trawled until all the baits have been taken by the target fish. It’s a very cost effective way of fishing as you only spend money on the bait that attracts the fish you want to take home. It does mean, however, that you’ll only get as many fish as hooks/bait you have which is not the most effective way of growing your average catch over time.

Net fishing is where a boat will trawl a huge net (most infamously using the ‘Purse Seine' technique) for hours at a time and catch whatever comes into it’s path. They will target areas where the fish they are after tend to congregate but will also pick up a lot of other, unwanted fish (known as by-catch). There is wastage here as you spend money catching fish that you aren’t targeting. That being said, the net is so wide that you end up catching a lot more of the fish you are targeting and have a chance of catching a lot more fish in total than you ever could with the limited line fishing technique. This chance of an exponential haul means that net fishing is a more effective way to increase your average catch in the long term. 

Line fishing is very similar to performance media. You use a specific bait (online media such as social ads and display) to catch a specific fish (narrow data targeting). 

Net fishing is very similar to broad reach brand media. You use a big net (broad reach media such as TV, radio or billboards) to catch a huge amount of different fish (a broader target). 

So how do I convince start up marketers to ditch the performance media line method of cast the net of broad reach media?

Line fishing with performance media means brands only spend money catching the exact audience they're after. 

It is very cost efficient, but you will miss out on the potential for exponential returns from broad reach media and will find it hard to reach new audiences en masse. 

Net fishing with broad-reach media reaches a larger, broader audience delivering a larger total impact for your brand.

It does mean wasting money on audiences not in your direct target, but the brand exposure to a larger audience, in an impactful and memorable manner, becomes profitable in the long run.

For startup brands on the hunt for growth, exposing oneself to larger, broad audiences is crucial. You do waste money on irrelevant audiences but you expose yourself to a much larger target and in the long run that’s what will drive brand growth.

Where things get really interesting is working out how to use the two methods to benefit each other. 

An audience that has been exposed to certain types of broad reach media (such as TV) can then be retargeted with performance media online. That’s when the data experts can come in and start the optimisation machine to work out who within the previously exposed target can be acquired most efficiently. 

It’s kind of like if you hauled in a huge catch from your net trawl and were able to then target the most valuable fish using the cost-effective line method. 

This method will increase the targetable audience which allows a startup brand to efficiently acquire new customers beyond their core audience, growing their brand in the process.

There’s well researched proof of the strength of combining these tactics. Binet and Field in their extensive research of marketing campaigns for their 'Long and Short of It' IPA paper found that the most profitable campaigns had a 60:40 ratio of broad reach (net fishing) and tightly targeted (line fishing) activation media investments. 

There’s an old saying ‘Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime’. I hope that by teaching maturing startup brands to fish with impact they will enjoy a lifetime of healthy brand growth. 

P.S: Please comment below to share any other useful metaphors that have helped you explain strategic theory!