Short and long term in Marketing: the effects on content and storytelling

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If I think about the brands I have worked or consulted with over the past few years, mostly in the B2B technology space, the top priority has always been to activate short-term sales .

We B2B marketers often call this lead generation .

Companies have invested most of their budget in short-term, bottom-of-the what is gcash -funnel campaigns (and related content), hoping to increase sales in the coming quarters.

I had a similar priority when I ran the marketing division of a large energy company.

Branding wasn’t the focus . Short-term activation campaigns and sales programs were successful in most cases. At least, that’s what I (and most marketers) thought.

Les Binet and Peter Field 's most recent research , Effectiveness in Context , analyses many campaigns from the IPA database, with a focus on marketing effectiveness.


According to Binet and Field, marketing effectiveness is declining and "short-termism" is in many ways the mother of all marketing problems . What exactly happened?

Short and long term effects on marketing
As I mentioned, marketers are increasingly focusing on the short term. They spend money to trigger immediate sales, rather than building a brand for the long term. They opt for bottom-of-the-funnel tactics because they will pay off better — within a year, in most cases.

But in one of the most important pieces of research, Field and Binet show that, in the long run, that immediate insight will rapidly undermine the overall impact of marketing .

Too much time spent picking the lower fruits means less time to water the tree. Eventually, they will stop growing.


Moreover, distracted by a constant stream of short-term data, marketers will fail to notice that something is going to go wrong. And when they do, it may be too late.

There are other notable evidences mentioned in the research:

Online brands tend to seek short-term sales activation effects more than offline brands, due to customer availability;
Brands in categories with high search volume (financial services, durable goods, etc.) tend to establish themselves as online brands and seek short-term sales activation effects, because it is easier to trigger responses;
Subscription-based brand marketers (e.g. mobile network operators and software) have reduced communications spend by building brands.
Based on my experience, I would add that most B2B tech brands tend to prioritize short-term strategies due to the increased availability of customers online.

“The digital revolution often leads to greater activation efficiency and therefore a greater proportion must go to the brand. It seems paradoxical, but what is happening in the digital world means that we must build that brand even more,” says Binet.

" Companies that sell or reach audiences online need to spend more of their money on brand building, as they already have direct channels for conversion ," he adds. "Digital fulfillment is leading to greater distribution efficiency, so there needs to be more emphasis on branding."

The same is true for those categories with a high volume of online research and extensive use of technology, based on financial subscription, as well as for companies that neglected long-term brand recognition strategies .

One of the secrets to promoting the permanent construction of corporate identity is the ability to create experiences that stimulate the audience to have an emotional connection with what that brand represents.

This is precisely the topic of the 3rd edition of Rock Content Magazine , which you can download here:

rock content magazine experience and engagement
The role of content and storytelling in this context
As a result, content production focused primarily on the bottom of the funnel and content focused on the product (or service) to support short- and long-term sales enablement programs in marketing.

In most cases, a solid, documented content strategy was neither requested nor implemented. It is simply not needed to execute short-term sales activation campaigns.

Field and Binet advise a combined brand awareness and sales enablement strategy for maximum marketing effectiveness. They advise a 60/40 split for ideal impact across many different categories.

That means you should invest at least 60% of your budget in long-term brand awareness and 40% in more immediate sales activation. And there can be a variation in that value for each sector.

For example, in the financial sector, brand building is more important.


“Brand communications create long-lasting memory structures, which increase the basic level of demand and reduce price sensitivity .

“Sales activation triggers those memories and efficiently converts them into immediate sales,” says Binet.

Brand building and sales activation are not alternative options. They are mutually interdependent and both are essential for long-term success.

The authors explain that sales activation marketing is about increasing physical availability and works best through tight targeting and relevant messaging.

Brand building, on the other hand, means increasing consumers’ mental availability for your company and is driven by broad reach, stories, emotions and associations.