Many B2B marketers feel the pressure to deliver on short term goals. It’s understandable, we’re now in a fast, competitive, performance-driven market. But the immediacy of digital can only be turned into sustainable customer loyalty and continued growth with a proper long-term approach to brand building and digital marketing.
Building that trust, credibility and relatability doesn't happen overnight, and it takes a much deeper understanding of your audience than just the who, how, what, where and why of their media and buying habits.
Let’s face it, it has never been easier to get your message out into the world, and it has never been more difficult to stand out. So, whether they like it or not, most brands must play the long game to compete.
So, how do you do this? Start by setting realistic horizons for seeing longer results, and by defining what success looks like. You will always need a mix of short-term activity to drive your sales pipeline and longer-term activity to build relatability and credibility, but don’t judge both by the same metrics or horizons.
It’s never an easy sell, but marketers need to be given time to drive longer-term marketing. Boards, investors and CFOs need to have their expectations managed with the return on - and long-term value of – marketing.
Next, build a marketing function that properly allows for measurement, analysis, optimization and constant improvement. No one campaign will build a brand. You might get some sales from it – you might even get a lot – but a campaign-by-campaign-led approach can be somewhat futile. You need to keep coming up with the next to campaign to sustain the sales, and when each campaign is finished there’s little to nothing left to carry over, so you have to start again.
With all the pressure on short term results, it’s tempting to put longer term strategy in the ‘tomorrow’ or ‘too hard’ box. But the two are not mutually exclusive, in fact taking the bull by the horns with longer term thinking will also make your more tactical activity that much easier.
Often, longer term marketing is about identifying a ‘real world’ challenge and setting out to solve it. Let’s look at some interesting examples from B2C, starting with sunglasses brand Goodr, for example. The brand’s attention-grabbing marketing tactics have been noted in the past, but they are based on a strong premise of doing things differently and single-mindedly to solve a problem (ie sunglasses for runners that are affordable and not over-engineered). Goodr set out in 2015 with a mission to make sunglasses that runners would want to wear, and its marketing approach has supported this from day one.
Similarly, direct-to-consumer men’s wear brand True Classic set out on a mission to fill a gap in the market with its ‘elevated basics’ – affordable clothes that fit and look better. And while the brand invests in the online advertising that drives immediate sales, its marketing approach is all about driving its longer-term marketing mission.
Both of these brands understand just how important it is to build and maintain relatability with their audiences. Amazon really gets this – one of its leadership principles is focused on customer obsession: “Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers.”
So, focus on what your audience actually cares about, not just on trying to get them to care about you. It helps if you are truly connected to your community. If you don’t have the insight already, then sometimes you just have to roll up your sleeves and spend time listening to your audience. This is something that fitness apparel brand Gymshark did to drive long-term relatability with its audience.
Ultimately, taking the longer-term approach to marketing is about building trust and credibility. As we’ve seen with even new brands such as Goodr, True Classic and Gymshark, you have to stay true to what you are and why you exist. Sometimes to achieve this, you have to build affiliations and associations with other brands, influencers, movements and so on.
There are no real short cuts in marketing, even if in our world of digital immediacy, it might seem like there are. Have a clear business goal and set out a realistic marketing strategy to achieve this. With the right longer-term approach, sustainable growth will come, and with it, short-term results.
If you want to talk with a marketing expert at Luxid about how to get the most from a longer term B2B strategy, then contact us here.
[This post is based on a piece first published in Mediacat magazine]
