Is your marketing an investment or an expense?
Do you invest in marketing programs, or are you expensing marketing campaigns?
Marketing Campaigns vs Marketing Programs
A marketing campaign is a defined series of activities used to market a product or service during a specific time period. A marketing campaign has a specific start and end date.
A marketing program is an ongoing series of activities to market a product or service.
Marketing Campaigns
Marketing campaigns have specific start and end dates, making them useful to promote time-based events and generate immediate sales opportunities.
Marketing campaigns include:
- Conferences and trade shows
- Webinars
- Seasonal promotions
- Inventory reduction sales
- Public relations announcements
- New product introductions
- Revenue bumps
Marketing campaigns have a short-term focus.
Marketing Programs
Marketing programs, on the other hand, focus on the long term. Programs are ongoing processes without discrete start and end dates. The ongoing nature of programs allows buyers to enter the process at any time and proceed with their customer journey whenever they are ready.
Marketing programs are useful for:
- Helping the customer journey
- Customer onboarding
- Customer retention
- Most B2B sales
- B2C large purchases
Marketing programs can include ongoing, recurring events such as a weekly webinar that educates on your audience’s problems or interests. More often, they are automated series of communications, typically email or direct mail, that are initiated by a user action such as signing up for a newsletter or downloading a whitepaper.
How Campaigns and Programs Fit the Revenue Process
Except for low consideration purchases, marketing campaigns frequently are targeted at one phase in the Awareness > Consideration > Decision customer journey.
Marketing campaign examples include:
- Google search and display pay-per-click advertising to create awareness
- Direct mail campaign to create awareness and drive people to your website
- An email campaign with a coupon code designed to push prospects into making a purchase decision
Marketing programs run continually, so they are available when a prospect first learns of your company or is getting ready to investigate solutions and make a purchase decision. A program is designed to deliver multiple touches that can help move a prospect from awareness through consideration to making a purchase decision.
Here is an example marketing program:
A weekly webinar creates company and product awareness. Digital ads and social sharing are used to drive webinar registrations.
A short series of emails are sent out after the webinar. Each email has a different offer; a prospect’s response to a particular message can indicate how quickly they might move to a purchase decision.
- If they click on a message that describes problems they are having, they’re likely still trying to define problems that need to be solved.
- If they click on a call to action to learn about detailed product information or a free trial, they are likely moving toward a purchase decision.
Marketing automation makes it easy to follow up with each person with relevant messages regardless of where they are in their personal customer journey.
The beauty of marketing programs is that they allow prospects to move through their own journey at their own pace as quickly or slowly as they’d like. Calendar-based campaigns can only be effective if the offer, whether useful information or a discount, reaches the prospect when they need it. The message won’t work if the timing is not right.
The messaging in an ongoing program can be dripped out to the prospect over time, keeping you top-of-mind as they continue down their customer journey.
Marketing Expense
A business operating expense is a payment made for the day-to-day functioning of a business. Once the money is paid, it’s gone. Advertising that aims to generate immediate sales is a typical marketing expense. You pay for the advertising, prospects view it, and the money is lost if they don’t act. It is still a marketing touchpoint, so you may get some brand awareness benefits. It typically takes seven touches for someone to remember your brand. But if your goal is short-term sales, the money is spent whether there’s return on investment or not.
Marketing campaigns are, for the most part, expenses. The benefit incurred from money spent on calendar-based marketing activities happens during the campaign time frame, or there is no benefit.
Marketing Investment
A capital expense is an expense a business incurs to create a benefit in the future. The future benefit makes a capital expense an investment in your business.
Creating content and implementing ongoing programs are classic examples of marketing investments. An investment in quality marketing content can be effective for years. Blog posts can drive traffic over the long term. According to Google Analytics, a blog post I co-wrote for a client has been one of their top six landing pages for five years now and counting. A white paper can similarly generate leads for years. The same can happen from videos you produce and publish on YouTube.
Another example of a marketing investment is designing and implementing a marketing automation program. While you may continually test and make small investments, most of the content and all the programmatic logic can be used over a long period of time.
Campaigns & Expenses | Programs & Investments |
---|---|
Short term results | Long term results |
Sprint | Marathon |
Calendar based | Behavior based |
Communicate at random times | Communicate at the right time |
PPC goal: drive sales | PPC goal: collect leads |
How to Invest in Your Marketing
You can do several things to move more of your marketing spend from a short-term expense into long-term investments.
- Create variable data direct mail templates that can be used repeatedly with personalized, relevant messages.
- Spend less on your monthly email newsletters. Invest the time into creating targeted drip email campaigns initiated by a predetermined prospect behavior and sent out over time.
- Spend less on reactive campaigns that attempt to solve short-term sales pipeline problems. Instead, take the time to map out your customers’ journeys and create content for each step of the way.
Marketing programs normally use multiple marketing channels. Integrate your touchpoints to help move your prospects along their customer journey.