PROTECT YOUR BUDGET: Defending Marketing Campaigns in Difficult Economic Times
In any recessionary environment, businesses instinctively want to cut advertising budgets — especially at the top of the funnel. In this talk, Samuel will give an introduction to Brand 101, demonstrate how brand advertising works, and show the benefits of building a strong brand. Then, he will show how to translate general marketing and advertising concepts into CFO-speak and financial metrics into CMO-speak so that both sides will understand each other. After all, cutting brand advertising spend in the short term will only hurt companies in the long term after the economy recovers.
Actionable takeaways:
— Understand how brand advertising gets leads and sales today and tomorrow, increases conversion rates, and raises pricing power over the short- and long-term.
— See why cutting brand advertising spend today harms companies tomorrow — even long after recessions are over.
— Learn how to defend your top-of-the-funnel brand advertising spend to CFOs, CEOs, and boards of directors.
THIS SPEECH CAN BE TAILORED TO A B2C CONTEXT, B2B CONTEXT, OR BOTH.
What This Speech Covers
For more detail, please read these B2B columns of mine in The Drum:
First: Should B2B content marketers focus more on advertising? Second: An exclusive look at new B2B marketing research Third: Brandless and branding.
Presentation Excerpts
On average, only 95% of the market is actively looking for a given solution. That means that 5% of the market should be targeted with direct response, lead generation, and sales efforts. The other 95% should be targeted with marcom that aims to get the company remembered for when those 95% do want to buy in the future. Of course, quick leads and sales are important for survival and growth in the short term. But the most growth in the future comes from building a brand among all potential category buyers.
To achieve both short-term and long-term B2B marketing goals, marcom spending must be divided into two categories: activation and brand. On the brand side, marcom must focus on people, be a little more emotional, and build mental availability — it tells people what to think and remember over the long term. Conversely, activation spend tells people what to do (click and become leads) right now.
When a person wants to buy something, his brain comes up with a list of options that are “top of mind.” This is a consideration set. The goal of brand advertising is not just to build awareness that you exist — it is to build enough mental availability so that you are in everyone’s consideration set in the future. If you are not in the consideration set in the beginning, you will never be bought at all. The goal of B2B brand advertising is to create memorable ads that use both distinctive brand assets and speak to the times when people start thinking about buying the category (these are called category entry points).
Over millions of years, our human brains have evolved to recognize and remember people, characters, and particularly faces. Building and using such distinctive brand assets is the best way for your company to get remembered.
Activation certainly gets leads in the short-term. But building a strong brand throughout the entire category gets leads today and leads tomorrow along with increasing pricing power, talent acquisition, and more.