How do you balance performance marketing with brand awareness and loyalty initiatives
Business executives are preparing their companies for the worst-case scenario by making cuts to spending and laying off employees as experts continue to discuss the likelihood of a recession. CEOs are under pressure to provide evidence of the returns on their investments and to defend the spending of their funds. Executives in the marketing field have prioritized CMO candidates with performance marketing experience over those with more traditional brand marketing credentials.
It’s a typical snare that corporate executives encounter. It makes sense to prioritize tasks with an immediate financial impact when funds are tight and to scale down on tasks that are harder to link to revenue immediately or have longer-term effects. Because performance marketing is so easily quantifiable, it is simpler to observe how a company’s marketing expenditures directly impact its bottom line and to hold it more accountable for business outcomes.
However, the effects of economic uncertainty are felt by all parties; consumers and businesses both cut back on their spending. The consumers of today are more astute than ever; they aren’t scared to buy from different brands when they perceive them as nothing more than monetary signs. Executives must prioritize brand marketing just as much as they do performance-based marketing because of growing customer expectations, declining client loyalty, and fiercer competition.
So, let’s learn to balance performance marketing with brand awareness and loyalty initiatives:
Define your objectives:
Prior to starting any campaign, you must specify your goals and your plan for measuring them. Are you seeking long-term advantages like fostering loyalty and trust or short-term ones like bringing in leads or sales? Your budget, channels, and metrics may need to change based on how you respond. For instance, you may want to measure metrics like impressions, reach, and engagement and boost your investment in social media, video, and display ads if your goal is to raise brand awareness. You should monitor metrics like click-through rate, cost per acquisition, and ROI and concentrate more on search, email, and retargeting advertisements if you want to improve performance.
Segment your audience:
The ability to target your audience according to their behaviour, interests, and preferences is one of the main benefits of performance marketing. This enables you to provide messages that motivate action and are both relevant and individualized. The many phases of your customer’s journey and how to guide them from awareness to loyalty must also be taken into account. For prospects, leads, customers, and advocates, for instance, you could wish to employ different kinds of information and offers. To give recognition to every touchpoint along the route, you can also wish to employ various attribution models.
Test and optimize:
Effective marketing is not a one-time event or a static approach. To increase the effectiveness and efficiency of your campaigns, you must continuously track, evaluate, and tweak them. To track and test many variables, including keywords, headlines, graphics, calls to action, and landing pages, you may use tools like Facebook Pixel, Google Analytics, and landing page builders. Additionally, you may compare various versions of your ads and pages by doing A/B and multivariate testing using tools like Google Optimize, Optimizely, and VWO. You can determine which of your campaigns works best for your audience and your goals by testing and optimizing them.
Align with your brand:
Your brand identity and values shouldn’t be compromised by performance marketing, even though it can assist you in reaching precise and quantifiable objectives. You must make sure that the tone, message, and voice of your brand are maintained across all platforms and channels in your performance marketing efforts. Additionally, you must make sure that your performance marketing initiatives fulfill your brand promise and give customers an enjoyable and unforgettable experience. You may improve your trust, reputation, and customer loyalty by matching your performance marketing to your brand.
Balance your portfolio:
Performance marketing is not a strategy that works for everyone. It is imperative to maintain equilibrium in your marketing mix by incorporating complementary and supportive types of techniques alongside performance marketing. For example, to raise awareness, impart knowledge, and motivate your audience, you might wish to use influencer, referral, or content marketing. To keep, upsell, and cross-sell your customers, you might also wish to use social media marketing, loyalty programs, or email marketing. You may develop a comprehensive and integrated marketing strategy that addresses every stage of your client experience by maintaining a balanced portfolio.
About The Author
