The very long and the short of it
In the world of insights and research, marketing (if done at all) is frequently focused on short-term, tactical, lead generation. Agencies and suppliers come to us because they want more leads and see marketing as a support for sales and new business. In a digital environment, this seems to be an easy win. Create content to drive traffic and give you leads for your website, encourage clicks, capture data, measure, and target – and Bob’s your uncle. The problem is that this approach very often leads to disappointment and frustration.
A recent study by Professor John Dawes from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute helps us to understand why. Hold on to your chair because you might be about to have a jaw dropping moment…the research reveals that 95% of your potential customers are not in the market for your services right now and possibly won’t be for months or even years. Indeed, only 5% of B2B buyers are looking to buy at any given time. What is more, contrary to popular belief, there’s nothing you can do to convince a potential customer to think about entering the market earlier, because they already have what they need, and they won’t need to change it any time soon.
Let’s start from the beginning. Most of you will already be familiar with The Long and The Short of It the 2013 paper by Binet and Field with the IPA. This introduced the idea that brands should be spending 60% of their budget on long-term brand building and 40% on activation and direct targeting. The key insight is that you need to build memorable and meaningful connections over time to build brands and this will help your tactical marketing to work. But this was entirely based on research into B2C advertising.
Read the full article in Keen As Mustard.
