Direct Marketing vs Brand Building
This should not be considered a versus situation as if you operate or are the owner of a business the idea should be to have both of these elements working in concert. However, for the sake of this discussion, we shall make the effort to compare and contrast.
When you really get down to it, you will end up with two types of marketing: The type designed to get your name out there or build your brand, and the type designed to encourage prospects to take action or respond. Marketing is either branding or direct! The type you need all depends on the industry your business is in, where your business is in terms of life cycle and your business’s position in the marketplace.
“Coca Cola does not think that if you see an ad during the Super Bowl that you will leave the Super Bowl party and go buy Coke.”
– Seth Godin
Branding, or brand building, would work well with older more established companies, who already have their piece of the market share set in terms of revenue. They are mostly trying to keep their name out there to protect market share against equally big and established brands.
Smaller companies should focus more on marketing practices that would point to high-quality leads, sales opportunities and eventually new customers. Direct marketing should garner direct results! Potential consumers need to be connected to your company, usually through some offer or content that helps them along in their journey. Then they have to engage, be interested and helped by your messages, stories, content and offers. The longer your potential consumers don’t hear from you, the more likely they will be engaged or connected with your competition. You need to be working hard to educate them all throughout their journey, and this almost always means providing a wide variety of content delivered in context to their journey stage, role, industry and specific challenge they’re facing.
Branding should be looked on as the cherry on top of a sundae well made by the results brought about by direct marketing.
There is another aspect of branding that is sometimes overlooked, that the sheer cost of doing it on a large scale. A cost which many times cannot be justified by using any normal measuring metrics. These costs could be overbearing for a new business just trying to find its footing. Cost effective direct marketing methods such as search engine optimization, paid social campaigns, paid search and email marketing should lead to actual conversion/sales which are tied to earning revenue.
Once again, although we explored a few of the reasons why you should or shouldn’t use either direct marketing or build your company’s brand, the overall idea is to use a bit of both on your marketing journey.
For your next campaign carefully measure your goals and expectations. However, if there was ever a choice to be made, focus on direct marketing, because sales from it should keep you on your feet. Because no matter how many people know about your business, if they are not buying in, then you won’t be making any money.
