In the business world, it is easy to get caught up in a cycle of immediate sales targets and quarterly revenue goals. These metrics are critical, but they aren’t the only gauge of a business’s health and strength. And they don’t paint the full picture of what effective marketing can achieve.
While quantifiable outcomes like sales, leads, and ROI are important, focusing solely on these metrics can lead to an unbalanced focus on short-term goals and reliance on advertising.
Let’s dive deeper to see the whole story of your organization’s health and the full long-term potential of your marketing!
Looking Beyond the Numbers: Not All Marketing Goals are Trackable
Brand-centric goals like awareness, loyalty, and perception are harder to measure and tie directly back to a dollar amount. While increased social followers, engagement, reviews, and survey results can be indicators, they don’t give the whole picture.
Big wins in these areas take time, but that doesn’t mean they lack value. In fact, they play a crucial role in building a sustainable brand. Together, these aspects of your marketing efforts contribute to long-term business success, often outweighing short-term gains.
Short-term goals in marketing can lead to immediate sales and build valuable momentum for your business. Long-term goals help you develop brand awareness that drives future growth. Both are important for the health of your business.
“Tapping into advertising is a great way to meet short-term goals and capture immediate sales from prospects who are already aware of their problem or your solution. Investing in SEO, content marketing, email, and social media can help you reach long-term goals revolving around the way your business is positioned in the marketplace, which can help you stay competitive—and top of mind—in an ever-changing landscape when your target market is ready to purchase.”
— Kayde Kempen, Account Strategist at E-Power Marketing.
Set the Stage for Future Sales Through Brand Awareness
It’s unlikely that a customer will buy your product or even remember your brand after just one or two touchpoints. You have to build that awareness over time.
Research shows it can take up to 50 interactions with your brand before a sale, depending on the buying stage a potential customer is in. And that number can vary dramatically based on how competitive your industry is, the length of a typical sales cycle, and how involved your product or service is.
Building brand awareness takes a strategic approach and marketing across multiple touchpoints. You have to meet customers where they’re at in their journey and consistently put your brand in front of potential customers in a positive way.
Apple has spent decades honing their brand and building awareness in the tech space, becoming one of the world’s most recognizable companies. As such, Apple has an incredible 71% value share in the smartphone market.
While we can’t all be Apple, the importance of investing in long-term strategies to build your brand can’t be ignored.
At E-Power, we recommend customized multi-channel marketing programs that focus on targeted — and repeated — touchpoints for your customers. This approach includes everything from social media and email to content and digital advertising, allowing your customers to engage and experience your brand in multiple ways.
Increase Repeat Sales by Building Customer Loyalty
Good marketing goes beyond one-time transactions; it fosters ongoing relationships with customers. Loyal customers are more likely to make repeat purchases and recommend your brand to others.
Loyalty is harder to foster today than ever due to changing buying habits and priorities.
Research also shows that rather than sticking with their favorite companies, 77% of Gen Z adults make an effort to try new brands. This is “the highest share of any generation.”
As buying habits shift, the SAP Emarsys Customer Loyalty Index 2023 showed the United States had “a 14% decline in customer loyalty,” dropping from 79% in 2022 to 68% in 2023.
Building loyalty requires nurturing a community around your brand over time. Personalized and consistent communication across channels, strong reward or loyalty programs, educational and helpful content, and quality at every stage of the process can help you win over customers.
Through consistent marketing efforts across channels, we’ve helped one of our e-commerce clients build a loyal customer base with 44% of customers placing more than one order over the last 12 months.
Building Strong Brand Perception through Marketing
In today’s competitive market, people choose brands they perceive to be “good” and align closely with their values, needs, and personality.
Research shows that “82% of shoppers want a consumer brand’s values to align with their own, and they’ll vote with their wallet if they don’t feel a match.”
A 2022 survey of 2,000 consumers showed that three out of five people would “rather pay more for something that’s better quality than opt for a cheaper alternative.”
From an operational perspective, a positive brand perception can also help you attract and retain employees. When employees are proud of the brand they represent, their engagement and productivity often increase. Studies have shown that potential candidates won’t even apply if the company has significantly negative reviews.
Marketing can help you improve brand perception over time by addressing issues and gaps that create a frustrating user experience and monitoring reviews and messages across online platforms.
By focusing messaging on speed of service and highlighting employee expertise across platforms, we’ve helped one of our local clients build a strong perception of quality through our digital marketing efforts. With a strong 4.6 rating on Google, many of the reviews specifically mention the customer service and overall quality of the work.
Play the Long Game For Sustained Brand Health
To harness the unseen value of these hard-to-measure goals, brands need to adopt a long-term perspective and strategic approach. Let’s look at ways to invest in your brand for enduring success.
Provide Useful Content to Build Trust and Credibility
Trust is the cornerstone of any successful brand. Building trust requires transparency, consistency, and repeatedly delivering on promises. You can build trust with your audience in various ways, but investing in content marketing is a great place to start.
From top-of-funnel blogs that help answer common questions to in-depth how-to videos that help customers get the most out of your product, a strong content marketing strategy will guide customers through the buyer’s journey and solidify your company as a trusted voice in your industry.
By consistently and transparently sharing information on your website and email platforms, you become a go-to resource for your audience. When customers are ready to buy, you’re a natural choice. You’re also top of mind when recommending products and services to friends, family members, and colleagues.
Focus on Community through Social Media
Creating a sense of community around your brand can foster loyalty and positive perception. Social media is a great way to build a supportive environment and strengthen the emotional bond between your brand and your audience.
Social media is a key way today’s customers find and share new products and businesses. Consistently sharing on-trend content, engaging with customers in comments, answering questions through DMs, and proactively connecting with others via online groups and communities can help you attract and retain customers over time.
Social media is a low-stakes point of entry, making it a great way to kick-start and retain customer relationships and consistently keep your brand top of mind. It’s also a way for businesses to show off their customer service skills through quick replies and helpful tidbits of information.
Create a Holistic Experience Across Touchpoints
Going all in on one marketing tactic or channel can ultimately fall flat, as consumers need multiple touchpoints along the path to purchase. Creating a holistic brand experience across touchpoints ensures a seamless customer journey and helps solidify brand perception and loyalty.
If any customer touchpoints fall short, it can damage your credibility. Whether engaging through advertising, social media, your website, in-store, or through customer service, customers should encounter a consistent message, tone, and quality.
This uniformity helps reinforce your brand’s identity and builds trust and loyalty over time. When every touchpoint reflects your brand’s values and promises, customers are more likely to feel a personal connection to your brand and, in turn, become returning customers and recommend you to friends or colleagues.
Empower Your Brand With E-Power
From quick wins to give your business the boost it needs to meet sales goals to long-term marketing strategies for sustained business growth, we’re all about empowering you to reach your short and long-term business goals.
E-Power’s team of experts will craft a customized marketing strategy each month, explaining why we recommend each tactic and how it will support your business goals now and in the future. Plus, you’ll have access to a full marketing dashboard so you can track progress in real time.
“E-Power stands out with genuinely transparent communication with our clients, as well as a structure that lets our production staff specialize in their areas of marketing focus. That focus on individual areas, such as SEO or Google Ads, rather than being spread across all areas of digital marketing, shows up in our clients’ results.”
— Jesse Plate, Account Strategist at E-Power Marketing
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