A marketing plan without a clearly articulated strategy is really just a series of tactics
For consumer connection and engagement, you need a marketing plan integrated with your brand strategy.
When was the last time you saw a memorable digital campaign that spoke directly to you – and that you could connect with on a gut level? Is anyone building truly iconic brands today?
Before the Internet, brands spent most of their budgets on brand marketing. This included building brands, bringing them to life, and developing that breakthrough creative that really represented the brand, and built emotional consumer connections. This kind of marketing helped to create iconic emotional connections to iconic brands – think Coke, Nike, Calvin Klein.
The goal of brand marketing was to drive awareness and to create consumer connections. Brand marketers did that by understanding consumers with a clear insight and a clear value proposition. What motivates our target consumer? What are the barriers are preventing consumers from buying more of your product? How can we help make consumers more connected to your product?
In our instant gratification, digitally-connected world, we are losing sight of the big picture, and patience it takes to build a sustainable brand.
What has changed?
There have been many changes in the past years that have created a new type of marketing – (while budgets have remained stable, need statistics) budgets have shifted from sustained brand investment and towards ROI-driven click-based campaigns. This is due to a variety of factors:
Marketing channels have proliferated.
Today, there is a proliferation of channels, and a huge amount of complexity in marketing. Now you worry not just about print, television, radio, OOH and direct mail – you also need to think about digital and all the digital variants – SEO, SEM, Digital, lead generation, social, display, video, VR and more.
ROI is measured continuously.
Today, you can measure clicks instantly. ROI calculations are made hourly/daily/weekly/monthly. Compare this to print and television campaigns from pre-Internet days. Back then the best measurements of effectiveness took place over time, or with pre and post-measurement of consumer opinion, or qualitative analysis.
Media impressions are fleeting.
The digital impression is fleeting. Digital campaigns are a series of impressions and disjointed tests and content – all designed to show you ads and algorithmically continue to serve the ads until you decide to click.
What does this mean for brands?
The majority of spend is going to these paid digital campaigns (Gartner: Marketing budgets continue to climb, with an emphasis on digital). With the emphasis on clicks and response, the result is that many marketing plans are built with an emphasis on short-term results and with a focus on immediate algorithmic measurement.
These digital campaigns are often composed of a series of fleeting impressions. These campaigns are strung together across channels and can often feel disjointed.
With marketers spending more and more in digital channels, how do we optimize effectiveness in clicks and response rates, while continuing to build the brand? How do we build a truly integrated brand campaign?