Performance Vs Branding: How To Win With The Board

Marketing Unfiltered 5 -- Could Account Board Marketing Be Your Winning Play?

Hello, and congrats you made it to Friday.

A special thank you to our new subscribers. We had an influx last week so thank you for helping to spread the word.

A personal thank you for all the great messages and WhatsApp messages for my recommendation to play the game and 8 steps to start playing with PQ.

Don’t worry it is a Jaguar-free zone today ;-)

This week’s article comes from Nick, covering the age-old debate Performance Vs. Brand with his take on winning over the board.

  • Loving Marketing Unfiltered? Please share our articles on LinkedIn with your take and tag us.

  • Wanna Chat? If you would like to discuss any of our unfiltered articles, you can always hit reply and tell us what you think or if it resonated with you.

  • Got Something To Share On Marketing Unfiltered: If you would like to contribute to Marketing Unfiltered, happily pitch via our dedicated → Google forms

Hi, welcome to the weekly appointment with “The Marketing Unfiltered Newsletter”.

This week, it’s on me, Nick, an Italian-native Marketer who started his career when Google was founded.

Today I want to speak about a recurring issue I noticed in companies. It doesn’t matter the country or the size, even though smaller companies tend to be more inclined to fall into this trap called: performance marketing.

Don’t get me wrong, we all need to measure the performance and make sure it’s at a good level.

The Performance Beast 

I’m speaking about the enormous, hungry, never-satisfied beast that drains all resources. This is especially true in eCommerce—when an inexperienced owner starts to see some traction from paid ads, they make a simple assumption: the more I spend, the more I get.

They forget everything else.

They start to feed the beast and then, something happens.

The ROI decreases, the CAC increases and the sales stay flat (or go down). Their response is simple: feed the beast with more money. This is what performance marketing turns into if left alone with nothing else to support it, and you realise - or wrongly believe - that paid ads alone drive 100% of your sales.

ROI decreases ↓ , CAC increases ⬆, and Sales are flat-line 👀.

A sparkling idea comes: we need to hire someone that solves this problem.
And now the pressure is really on us, the marketing team.

When we join a business, the powers that be promise us we’re in charge, we can make decisions - we’re fully accountable…

What they don’t tell us is we have just a week, maybe a month to change everything and start increasing the revenue by three digits.

After this mythical deadline is drawn in the sand, we become puppets.

As soon as we start doing our job and stop feeding the beast with enormous quantities of money, they usually panic and ask you - well, sometimes they just bypass you - to put all the spend back where it was before.

The conversation might sound like this:

  • Our leads/sales are not increasing > Marketing’s fault

    • We offered different solutions > Rejected ❌

  • Marketing expenses are too high > Marketing’s fault

    • We presented at least two different plans and budgeting > Rejected  ❌

  • ROI is too low > Marketing’s fault 

    • We analysed the budget and the spending by channel offering a different approach > Rejected  ❌

  • Nothing is changing > Marketing’s fault

What Can We Possibly Do?

Let me share with you what I’ve learned after years of frustration (there’s a reason I have no hair anymore?!). Warning: does it work 100%? No, because there are ALWAYS levers outside of your control.

I’m Proud To Present My “ABM (Account Board Marketing) Strategy”

It develops as a classic ABM strategy, with the board members being your customers:

  1. Sales & Marketing alignment. It doesn’t matter if you are alone or you partner with other stakeholders. Your goal must be clear and the approach consistent

  2. Know your customers. Who are they? What motivates them? Most likely they are driven by emotions (fear). Use emotional intelligence to make them feel understood. Do not judge, emphasise!

  3. Create your buyer personas. They are literally in front of you, you don’t have to research. Don’t put YOUR feelings into this. You are playing their game on their map. Learn and adapt, you must tailor your communication to it.

  4. Use the Marketing & Sales techniques to win. Deliver your “content” to a wide range of stakeholders, you have to position yourself and have allies. Then prepare the pitch. I develop my pitch in this order:

    1. Data history. Purpose: you know, you understand them.

    2. Forecast in the future. Purpose: pain lever

    3. What if. Purpose: you do not offer a solution, you are suggesting alternatives (I usually offer 3). You don’t take away their leadership and their need to be in control.

    4. What’s next? Purpose: Reiterate the message that THEY are in charge by asking them to decide since it’s a crucial decision.

    5. Commitment. Purpose: Using a brain’s principle (when someone commits to something, especially in front of others, it’s difficult to go back) ask for a decision.

    6. Offer your Help. Purpose: Alleviate their burden by taking responsibility for the execution and results.

There are no templates, just storytelling, a process to win - no, earn - their support. The template, tone of voice and so on must be crafted following points 2 and 3.

Why Does It Work?

For a couple of reasons, related to the rational and subconscious part of the brain.

  1. “Control freaks” (CFs) are led by fear of losing control. Without debating on the illusion of the “meaning of being in control”, Performance Marketing gives CFs the illusion of controlling everything. CFs spend money, they track the clicks, and they see the journey. Branding doesn’t give you a sense of control because it is volatile, the meaning of it must be found and analysed across a wide range of data. There is not a direct correlation visible on a Google Report or a simple spreadsheet. Addressing their fears and offering them a sense of control, you still comply with their modus operandi.

  2. You do not challenge them. You understand them and emphasise by letting them know you feel they are not understood. The last thing they need is to have someone challenging their leadership.

Evolution 

Marketing and Branding like all the other things evolve constantly. We need to evolve too. 
The issues we have, the problems and frustrations we share in the group chats or by calling a colleague will always be present. 

Don’t fall into the CFs trap: as Marketers we know we can’t control everything, especially other people's behaviour.
BUT, our job is to understand and influence people’s behaviour. We do this constantly every day.

So why are we so frustrated when it happens?

I hear you: because they don’t trust us, because this is why they pay us, because… (add your list here).

And finally the good news: is there a solution? YES 

  1. A good plan is only as good as its communication

  2. Practise your communication/persuasion skills relentlessly

  3. Use your rational self - for the Star Trek fans over there, be the best Spock. 

This is my recipe, the solution I found. 

Don’t expect to change the world in a day. Work every day to give a different meaning to the world around you!

Connect With Nick On LinkedIn

» Game Time

Hit reply and let us know who the famous brand is

We will land in your inbox next week on the 29th.

Have a great weekend.

Thanks, Danny, Harry and Team Marketing Unfiltered

PS. Remember if you’ve missed any previous newsletters you can enjoy

Reply

or to participate.