The marketer's dilemma: how to drive short- and long-term goals with the power of brand.

[This article is an adaptation of a presentation I delivered at the CMO Alliance Summit in NYC last week]

Does this cartoon resonate? It seems there is this constant battle between focusing on longer-term, brand-building initiatives and short-term tactics and results. And CMOs certainly feel the brunt of this battle. The lowest average tenure in a decade (Spencer Stuart), low CEO confidence and trust (Boathouse Thinking)...it's a bit grim.

But why does this battle exist? There is plenty of documented evidence that strong brands drive financial success. When brands effectively and consistently set -- and deliver -- on expectations, you see positive results. Higher return on marketing investments, higher market shares, higher lifetime value of customers...and interestingly, you can even attract and retain talent as a lower cost than poor brands.

And yet, when I talk to other marketing leaders and ask what are their top priorities, it's always some version of "1) Pipeline 2) Conversion 3) Retention .. .and oh yeah, I guess brand."

So what has led to this marketer's dilemma -- this perceived tradeoff between short and long term areas of focus?

The internet has given rise to countless new digital channels, apps, and touch points, and people continue to engage digitally in all new ways – not just in B2C, but for B2B as well. 

With these new digital technologies and shifts in buying experiences, measurement of success started to shift as well. The focus became CPC, CPL, CPA - all the CPs! We even saw rise of new disciplines such as “Performance Marketing” as if other marketing was not "performing."

We entered an era of methodical optimization of marketing campaigns away from longer term, emotional goals, such as brand building, toward more revenue-oriented short-term goals, such as MQL generation.

At the same time, we've seen an incredible proliferation of technology to measure, automate, target, and manage. We're sitting on top of almost 10k marketing technology solutions that are capitalizing on this channel and data explosion (Chief Martec).

However, the world of brand measurement has remained fairly static, heavily reliant on survey-based, point-in-time measurement, or channel metrics as proxies, such as social or PR.

Surveys in general present a number of challenges, as the world has become noisier, but B2B in particular faces significant challenges as sample has become more difficult and expensive to secure. And frankly, the world is moving too fast to wait between surveys.

As marketers, we can continue to go down this path of short term focus, but we will continue to see the negative consequences, such as low CMO tenure and large cuts to marketing budgets as impact becomes harder and harder to achieve. It's because there is a fundamental marketing truth that is at odds with our current approach.

Professor John Dawes at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute researched buying behaviors in 2021 and found that only 5% of B2B buyers are in the market for a new solution at any given time. Given the recent economic challenges and delays in purchasing, Peter Weinberg and Jon Lombardo at the B2B Institute at LinkedIn surmise that the 5% is more like 1%. Only 1% to target your sales activating, shorter-term plays against! And yes, there are some amazing technologies available to better target that 1% and catch your buyer in an active intent cycle. But that still leaves upwards of 99% of your market in the dark...not getting to know your brand or build a relationships with it. That 99% -- they could be buyers one day!

Professor Byron Sharp , director of research at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, discusses the concept of "mental availability" in his book "How Brands Grow."

“A brand’s mental availability refers to the probability that a buyer will notice, recognize and/or think of a brand in buying situations. It depends on the quality and quantity of memory structures related to the brand.”

This is all about that 99%. Will they notice you or think of you when it does come time for them to make a change. This only happens if you have built that mental availability - have you built a relationship with the buyer over time, are you relevant and present where they are. Mental availability is the foundation for how strong brands deliver those financial outcomes we saw earlier.

So how do we end this tug of war?

First – we have to embrace as marketers and as broader organizations that brand building happens across the funnel. Each touch point a customer has with our brand (whether we control it or not) has the opportunity to build a deeper and deeper relationship. And every role in your marketing organization plays a an important part in building a strong brand.

There is actually quite a bit of data to help justify this:

• Excess Share of Voice: Nielsen found that every 10 points of excess share of voice produces half a percentage point of extra market share growth. And if you are a brand leader, that’s 1.4% extra market share growth compared to challenger brands.
• Content marketing: Content marketing leaders see 7.8x higher YoY growth in site traffic than follower brands (Aberdeen). By building more engaging content that connects your audience to your brand, you increase the opportunity to deepen the relationships and ultimately generate leads or purchases on your website.
• Reviews: Having peer reviews are an increasingly an important part of both B2C and B2B buying cycles (Powerreviews, G2 & Heinz Marketing).

At BlueOcean AI we did some research to further explore the relationship between brand, everyday marketing efforts across the funnel, and revenue impact.

We analyzed the 6,000+ brands in our intelligence platform and identified the top three metrics most correlated with revenue growth.

The top three were:

• Employee support: Employees are your best brand ambassadors, but when issues are brewing, employee sentiment is often the proverbial canary in the coal mine…look at what happened with Peloton and the bubbling employee negativity that preceded an ultimate fall financially.
• Non-branded search: If you are bringing in more website visitors via non branded search than your competitors – it means you not only gaining in Share of Voice, but you are dialed in to what your customers care about, what they are searching for, and serving up relevant content that deepens the relationship you have with them
• Audience reviews: We mentioned reviews above, but our research found that both the average rating AND the volume of reviews are important in terms of driving revenue impact.

We conducted another study where we took a look at the impact of audience connection on brand and business health.

We found that when brands align their messaging and content with the themes their audiences care about most, and they generate higher sentiment, there were three important outcomes:

• An improvement in brand health, specifically in support of driving consideration:  When brands talk with audiences on their level, about the things they care about, rather than at them, they are more likely to be perceived as important and relevant leaders in their category.
• Accelerated share of voice: Brands can impact their share of voice more efficiently when they have strong content alignment and sentiment. Intuitively, this makes sense: when social media audiences see a brand discussing the themes they’re interested in and acknowledging their sentiments, they are more compelled to engage with and amplify that content.
• Higher “Estimated future revenue growth” vs. competitors: BlueOcean calculates an estimated future growth metric as part of its brand framework. Brands that aligned more closely with audiences and focused on improving resonance can expect to growth revenue at a faster rate than their competitors. This relationship is so powerful that it nearly drew a 1:1 correlation - even more than overall advertising spend.   

Now that we have some good evidence, how do we put it all together? We’ve worked with a number of customers to help them bring brand to the forefront of their strategies. As part of this work, we’ve identified a number of critical steps:

• Remember the 99-1 rule: Of course, continue to target that 1% with some of the great intent-based tools out there, but ensure you are also investing in brand…at the same time. Some experts recommend a budget that is split 60% brand 40% demand gen or sales activation, and most budgets are actually flipped the other way.

• Create a connected marketing framework: This can be helpful both in helping your team and org understand how different pieces of marketing come together to support brand building – and it can serve as a useful measurement view as well. Above is an example of a framework and report we use with our BlueOcean customers to communicate their brand and marketing impact.
• Establish benchmarks to show improvements: This is a really great way to show the impact of brand health on other "shorter term" metrics like “conversion of paid media” or increase in size of the intent groups. Brand is the rising tide that lifts all boats, and you should see these metrics improve as you increase mental availability and drive deeper audience connection.
• Communicate effectively with your C-Suite: Lack of communication was cited as one of the top reasons CMOs struggle with garnering trust and confidence from their CEOs. Help them understand how marketing works (again and again), and use consistent framing as you show the impact of marketing. 

I'd love to learn more about your approach to marketing and brand, and driving peaceful coexistence between short- and long-term efforts.