Marketing is a long game. Avoid the short-term mindset.
Marketing plays a key role in getting the word out about a company, building brand affinity, and creating air cover for the sales team amongst a plethora of other things. However, it’s often treated as an extension of sales with similar goals and an expectation of short-term results. This can be detrimental to the company and create behaviors that don’t favor the long game.
I want to be clear: marketing is a long game. A strategic marketing plan must be in support of, and align to, the long-term company goals. To treat it as something that operates on a quarterly basis, with a start and stop time in that quarter, is going to produce sub-par results. Sure, there are a lot of short-term tactical activities that must happen, but those must come naturally from an overall strategy.
Take the time to do it right
Building a brand that your target audience recognizes and trusts takes time. The key to this is to be recognizable - to become a part of the “evoked set” of choices when the customer has a problem. [Evoked set: the brands of a particular product that a customer considers when choosing to buy the product.] This comes from repetition. Most people will not remember a message or image or logo the first time they see it. It often takes 10 - 15 impressions for a single person to start to remember those visual aids or references. That’s why you’ll see the same ad repeating multiple times on the streaming or media platforms you use. They’ve identified you as part of that target audience and repeating that ad or commercial buys your mindshare.
For B2B companies, the complexity of this is higher. There are often multiple buyers, influencers, and users within any given target company. Each will require different messaging, they may get their information from different sources, and have different senses of urgency about obtaining a solution to their problem. The commonality is that they all require being exposed to your brand regularly to create awareness and begin to build affinity.
Short-term wins vs long-term goals
The problem I see on a regular basis is that the long game gets forfeited for short-term wins. Sometimes it goes like this:
We’re not meeting our quarterly pipeline goals. Pause all branding efforts. Let’s put together a lead magnet, throw dollars into paid advertising, and capture any demand it may generate. Sales follows up with the leads and finds that most, if not all, are not qualified. Maybe there’s a gem in the bunch, but the campaign is considered a bust because it didn’t produce enough qualified pipeline.
The contacts were interested in the lead magnet, but not in finding a solution right now or they’re just not the right target. It’s a cycle that repeats itself over and over.
How should we think of marketing then? Here are my tips:
LONG-TERM STRATEGY: Create a long-term marketing strategy that aligns with the company’s long-term business goals.
HIGH-LEVEL MESSAGES: The strategy needs to include high-level messages for each of the target audiences that will use your product or service or influence its purchase. Tactical messages can then be derived from this.
BUILD A STRONG BRAND: Focus on building a strong, recognizable, trusted brand with your target audience. This means being crystal clear on who your audience is and knowing everything about them.
BE CONSISTENT: Generating and capturing demand for your product or service needs to be built on the brand’s foundation. Without brand building, demand generation will not be as successful as it needs to be.
TIME AND REPETITION: When thinking about tactical campaigns to generate and capture demand, think about these in terms of months, not weeks. Your audience needs time to see the message or offer several times before actioning on it. Think of it as making a garden grow: first planting the seed, watering the seed, fertilizing it, providing sunlight, pulling weeds, watering it some more, and then, eventually, you’ll see the first little green sprout come out of the ground. Give it time and your harvest will be better for it.
BE AGILE, BUT DON’T PIVOT TOO MUCH: If you’re a Friends nerd like me, when you hear the word “pivot” it brings up a certain scene. Anyone else? But when I’m talking about pivoting in this context is scrapping one marketing tactic for another great idea when you haven’t had a chance to see the initial one through. The questions I’d ask in this situation are:
did you give the initial activity enough time to start seeing results?
what makes the “new” great idea a better tactic than the original one?
are we straying from the long-term strategy or high-level messages we agreed upon with this great idea?
MEASURE MARKETING ON ANNUAL ARR OR REVENUE GOALS: I’m of the belief that marketing must be measured on contributing to the company’s ARR or revenue goals. On an annual basis. [NOTE: The italics and underline are intentional here.] Being measured this way enforces the right behavior, rather than stuffing a pipeline with under-qualified leads and hitting vanity lead and MQL targets that just takes attention away from closing business.
Wrap-up
Because marketing is a long game, we have to give it the runway it needs to get the business off the ground and hit cruising altitude. Adhering to short-term quarterly pipeline goals or constantly pivoting marketing tactics will delay hitting altitude and create a ton of turbulence for everyone along the way.
If you have any questions about this post or want to contact me directly, please either send an email to rosa@rosalear.com or submit a Contact Me! form here.
