Branding plays a key role in the effectiveness of marketing
Brands that want to improve marketing effectiveness need to balance long- and short-term effects and ensure they don’t forget about the importance of creativity, according to a number of marketing effectiveness experts.
“It comes down to having one, maybe two objectives that are about delivering the kind of dollar return next year that will keep everyone happy. [And then] we normally add in maybe one more objective, which is longer-term brand building, less immediate return, as well.
“As long as I can get my budget to cover the short-term return and the longer-term impact that will set things up for future years, we are in good shape.”
Matthew Chappell, a partner at Gain Theory, warns that the proportion of brands doing a “good job” of measuring long-term value is nowhere near as high as those measuring short-term impacts. That leads to short-term behaviour that can damage a brand in the long run.
Annabel Venner, global brand director at Hiscox, the brand is a “very key element” in driving profitable growth. “You need to be very cognisant in terms of what consumers think of your brand and what do you need to change about your messaging and what behaviour you want to drive. You need to start with that.”
For marketers looking to boost effectiveness, Thomas Barta has a simple solution – plan an effectiveness day every six months where marketing and finance come together and look at all the areas of marketing to see where they could do better.
“Go through the effectiveness of funnel – segmentation, messages, media mix, execution, consistency – and have a look at what you could do better. It’s simple things like this that will raise the bar of effectiveness in companies.”
And don’t forget about creativity. “Creativity, ideas, all the magic of marketing becomes just as important in the future. We can’t say that now we’ve got this [marketing effectiveness] system creativity doesn’t matter anymore. Actually, it matters even more than it did before,” concludes Andrew Geoghegan, Diageo’s global head of consumer planning and customer marketing.
Source: Marketing Week – November 2018