Last week I was asked if I am a performance led marketer or a brand led marketer. It’s in one’s DNA – apparently. Hmmm, this question made me think about marketing in general.
Having worked all my marketing roles with internet companies I have obviously a very strong performance led background, by that I mean being able to gather data, to track (especially conversions), to measure impact and to change almost immediately.
It’s a great base to start. It brings a certain discipline with it. It’s the starting point of having more and more performance related contracts with agencies that usually just worked on pure retainers or service charges. It’s the driver of wanting to understand impact. It makes it easy to justify. It encourages testing of new ideas and a short feedback loop.
It can, however, also lead to a very short sighted approach, one only driven by numbers and technology; underestimating or completely ignoring other fields such as psychology, sociology and politics. It might lead to dismissing opportunities that take longer to develop; it might lead to a strong inward focus instead of a balanced approach. Numbers become more important than people. That’s the great danger and the great mistake.
To make a real impact, a feed forward loop needs to be added to the natural feedback loop of performance marketing. The creation of a brand, of a market place, of a reality needs to be added to the reactive nature to the market. The brand vision and the brand essence need to filter and drive performance related marketing. And performance related marketing’s rigorous tracking approach needs to be included into every single marketing activity, as an optimisation tool, but overall marketing impact needs to be measured holistically against the business strategy, because all marketing activities feed each other.
If we were to apply the currently popular performance measures of transaction and conversions to social media and mobile, we would – most likely – abort their usage straight away. And we would miss a massive opportunity.
We, as in everybody within social media, need to find different meaningful measures that reflect the nature of social media and mobile.
We, as in the marketing people, need to continue to participate in these new phenomena and adapt our strategies even though the performance doesn’t compare favourably at this state.
We, as the people running departments and companies, need to integrate social media and mobile into the culture of our organisation and place it at the heart of all our activities.
The change we have seen in the last 10 years is nothing compared to the change we will experience in the next 10 years – nowhere less so than in marketing.
By the way, if you wonder what my answer was, here it is: “I started in performance led marketing, but these days performance-led and brand-led approaches are no longer mutually exclusive. This differentiation is from the past, the present is about merging the two.”
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Twitter: mickrigby
says
The numbers/traffic/sales are always key to a business’s success but without a long term strategic goal that involves innovation, brand saliency and growth (be that linier or tangential growth) then you don’t have longevity and you don’t have a business. I’ve worked with many marketeers in my time and the most successful are the ones that look past the short term success. I’ve seen well established global businesses lose their way by focusing on the now and forgetting about where they need to be and what they should be doing next year.
Thanks for another edifying and thought provoking post Felix.
Twitter: Topbananas
says
Felix,
I enjoyed this post. I am not from a marketing background, but have hired and put together marketing execs and brand managers teams.
Your suggestion of change in the future merging the two prinicples is insightful.
We have to review metrics to manage- otherwise all decisions would be gut feel. The difficulty, as you point to is certain opportunities fail to have suitable metrics.
Strategic direction is big picture. Achieving large goals will always require investment in areas that can not be micro managed. A business that markets or does any entire discpline with a micro approach will kick itself when further down the journey a competitor owns a new space or has leaped infront.
I guess the book to be written is when to micro manage and when to macro measure.