我们永远在线的生活方式无疑为高度数字化的营销体验铺平了道路，这为品牌提供了迅速确保销售的好处，因为只需点击几下鼠标，就可以在网上购物。大流行来袭，电子商务爆炸式增长，这只会加速原本需要数年才能普及的趋势。然而，在过去的 15 个月里，各行各业都受到了巨大的冲击，这凸显了过度关注短期销售的营销工作的一个显著缺陷：它们对企业的长期发展几乎毫无帮助。
以转化为导向的营销并不完全是大流行病的产物，几年前它就已经是一个热门话题。但是，当去年全球品牌为节省预算和利润而暂停更广泛的广告投放时，以销售为导向的营销真正成为了焦点。从表面上看，这似乎是合乎逻辑的举动。毕竟，对于一个品牌来说，还有什么比销售更重要呢？
The answer to that question is actually pretty simple: long-term business vitality. Yes, all businesses need sales to operate, but continually engaging with existing customers is not all it takes to grow a business. As evidence, Nielsen’s Annual Marketing Report found that customer acquisition is the top marketing objective across businesses of all sizes. And yet, many marketers are still prioritizing securing quick sales at the expense of other brand-building initiatives.
在预算紧张、需要快速投资回报的情况下，转化驱动型营销的吸引力不言而喻。首席营销官任期和报告周期的缩短加剧了这种吸引力，因为快速获得衡量结果的能力促进了加倍努力实施这些可靠计划的愿望。
Short-term evidence aside, any marketing strategy that focuses solely on quick sales wins is myopic in nature. Notably, conversion-dominated strategies stand in opposition to numerous academic studies that argue that upper-funnel marketing is the best path to growth. When it comes to customer acquisition, the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute argues that building awareness is the best way to attract new customers—the primary ingredient in long-term viability. The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) even goes so far as to support a key formula from Les Binet and Peter Field: that the optimal balance between long- and short-term efforts is 60-40.
Putting aside the IPA’s prescribed ratio, the key point is that balance in marketing is paramount. Spend too little on brand building and activation marketing will be in vain because there was no nurturing of the consumer. Spend too little on activation marketing and marketers aren’t nudging fans of their brand over the final hurdle.
对于品牌来说，能够看到品牌建设和知名度努力所产生的切实而长期的影响也是至关重要的。值得注意的是，我们为今年的《尼尔森年度营销报告》所调查的营销人员认为，品牌知名度衡量是最重要的衡量能力。尽管有超过四分之三的营销人员表示这一指标非常重要，但各品牌仍未充分利用这一指标，而是将主要精力放在了短期销售上。关注销售额固然很好，但营销人员必须在营销工作中采用更全面的方法，以便在推动短期销售额的同时，保持品牌建设的长期影响力。
Nielsen research shows that a 1-point gain in brand metrics (e.g., awareness and consideration) drives a 1% increase in sales. Importantly, upper-funnel efforts also generate an array of ancillary benefits that can drive more effective sales activations—and not just for consumables. For example, Nielsen recently measured how effective a financial services company’s marketing efforts were at driving sales across approximately 20 markets and found that the correlation between the upper funnel brand metrics and marketing efficiency was exceptionally strong (0.73).
与核心客户进行有意义、有针对性的互动固然重要，但有效的营销需要的不仅仅是中低端渠道的激活--即使是在像大流行病期间这样的不确定时期。因此，随着世界适应新的现实，营销人员需要考虑同时使用品牌营销和增长营销策略，而不是为了一蹴而就而加倍使用其中一种策略。
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