Earlier this year, we discussed marketing strategy readiness for 2021. However, it is critical to also prepare for the long term.
Don’t Stress the Short Run: Prepare for the Long Term Too
As Cara Kantrowitz reports for Nielsen:
The pandemic arrived and E-commerce exploded. That accelerated trends that would have otherwise taken years to reach ubiquity. The significant disruption across businesses over the past 15 months, however, highlighted a notable shortcoming of marketing efforts that overly focus on driving short-term sales. They plan little to grow a business over the long term.
Conversion-oriented marketing didn’t arrive exclusively as a result of the pandemic. It’s been a hot topic for a few years now. But when brands around the globe paused their broader advertising efforts last year to preserve budgets and profits, sales-driven marketing really took the spotlight. At face value, this sounds like a logical move. After all, what’s more important for a brand than sales?
The answer to that question is actually pretty simple. Long-term business vitality. Yes, all businesses need sales to operate. Yet continually engaging with existing customers is not all it takes to grow a business. As evidence, Nielsen’s Annual Marketing Report found that customer acquisition represents the top marketing objective across businesses of all sizes. However, many marketers still prioritize securing quick sales at the expense of other brand-building initiatives.
Brands must see the tangible, long-term effects of brand-building and awareness efforts. Notably, the marketers we surveyed for this year’s Nielsen Annual Marketing Report consider brand awareness measurement the most important measurement capability. Even with more than three-quarters of marketers expressing the importance of this metric, brands continuously underutilize it. While they instead focus heavily on short-term sales
