Brand and Demand Marketing

How to deliver marketing growth

When market conditions get tougher, the natural instinct is to shift marketing efforts to the short term – to stimulate demand. This will cause problems later on.

Regardless of market conditions, it is so important to get a healthy balance between your brand and demand marketing. In this article, I will discuss:

Brand vs demand marketing

The barrier to brand marketing

How to get the balance right between the two techniques by focusing on - who, what, when and how.

Brand Vs Demand Marketing Brand marketing focuses on building brand salience, for example. It focuses on building your fame. It is about delivering a consistent message. It is about creating memory structures and strong associations and understanding about your brand. Demand marketing, on the other hand, uses short term tactics to stimulate demand. These require shorter-term campaigns, compared to longer-term campaigns for brand building.

The Barrier To Brand Marketing

In this market, businesses will want quick results, which brand marketing does not deliver; it is about building longer-term success. As a result, such marketing activities get shelved, or put on the backburner.

This is a mistake.

The key to success is to develop those lead metrics to go with your longer-term lag equivalent - so you get to demonstrate how you are building success for the future. Get The Balance Right

As a rule of thumb, you want to spend 50% of your time on both brand and demand marketing.

This will vary by business, as everyone has different goals and levels of brand equity. To make this work for you, just think about these points below - but the first thing you should think about is WHY should I do this? Be clear in your mind first. Who are you targeting?

Think about lead nurturing through your sales funnels here. Think about strategies for targeting NEW customers and those for EXISTING CUSTOMERS. The former will need more of a brand marketing focus, with demand marketing applied when lead scores dictate, for example.

You should target NEW and EXISTING customers at the same time – just with different approaches.

What is it you are trying to achieve?

For new customers, you will want to be building that brand salience and creating strong brand consideration. This is achieved through consistent ads, for example, which connects on an emotional level.

For existing customers, you may want to stimulate repeat business and build brand resonance.

When To Do This?

Brand marketing requires a longer-term campaign, an always-on if you like.

Demand based campaigns can be short-lived and followed up with a different initiative.

Where Should You Target Your Activities?

Brand marketing requires a broader reach, through advertising for example. Because it is broad, that is why you need a brand message.

Demand marketing requires a narrow focus, using email marketing for example. You can then tailor messages through segmentation and personalisation techniques. How Can You Do This?

As briefly mentioned, your brand marketing messages should be connecting at an emotional level (see previous Snackable article) but the demand marketing can use more rational messages.

Conclusion

In short, use brand marketing for your upper funnel efforts and demand marketing to stimulate short-term growth.  But do both.