Question
I'm conflicted between brand (Nike style ads) and direct marketing (FB ad talking about how awesome your product is and telling people to buy it now). Direct marketing has made us the most money so far, but there must be a reason why big companies are doing brand marketing. What percentage of your marketing strategy should be brand vs direct marketing?
Answer
There's no such thing as brand marketing vs. direct marketing. The purpose of marketing at the end of the day is to drive sales, plain and simple. Of course there are subsets of how to get there which is commonly broken down as "brand awareness", "consideration", and "direct response" but IMO everything should be looked at in terms of growing your customer base and how to measure that. NO ONE who purchases you products is NOT going to be aware of your brand right? That sale had to come from some level of awareness but more importantly is thinking about the mechanisms and tactics to do them all at once. What's the point of making someone "aware" of your brand if they have no intention to buy? Or what's the point of making someone "aware" WITH an intention to buy but you can't actually measure the performance/impact? At the end of the day everything you do should be geared around measuring it's impact to growing your brand. Otherwise you'll be sitting around spending money and guessing/wishing it's working.
