Media Mixes Must Be Balanced to Collapse Marketing Silos

Siloing brand and performance marketing efforts is becoming less common as marketers yearn for a more holistic approach, according to a new report by growth marketing agency 3Q/DEPT. The agency’s 2022 Growth Marketing report bases its findings on survey responses from 400 U.S. marketing leaders at brands with $100 million or more in annual revenue. It evaluated responses across four distinct industries—health care, financial services, retail and technology. Growth marketing, according to the report, increases audience engagement and helps marketers gain share with larger and more loyal audiences. But marketers are behind the ball when it comes to truly understanding—let alone implementing—growth marketing. When 3Q/DEPT quizzed those marketers on the discipline, just 41% fully understood its scope and it found just 91 of the 400 respondents actually operate with a growth marketing mindset. Marketers must diversify media mixes if they truly want to bring brand and performance disciplines together and avoid imbalanced strategies that miss the mark, the research shows. “What was brand and what was performance are coming close—are converging and getting closer and closer together,” Sam Huston, chief strategy officer at 3Q, told Adweek. Lopsided investments Performance marketing used to be the final step in a long and drawn out customer path to purchase. Modern marketers figured out how to shorten that path and quickly convince a consumer to buy their product. But most marketers aren’t reaching their full potential because they still skimp on the lower half of the funnel, according to the report. They also overprioritize every growth marketing initiative, and their upper funnel investment in programmatic is the only one that is well balanced. When survey respondents selected the metrics they found most valuable, one performance metric and two growth marketing metrics rose to the top. 49% of respondents deemed tracking channel performance and activity-based metrics like clicks and conversions the most informative marketing metrics. Meanwhile, 48% of respondents found loyalty and retention most informative, and 46% valued market share gains and competitor preference insights. Understanding the full customer journey is crucial to combining disciplines, according to Huston. Taking a full-funnel approach may seem “formulaic,” but the truth is that “there’s still a lot of magic in unlocking this,” Huston said. How to combine disciplines Brands can adopt the growth marketing mindset by investing in all three growth drivers: analytics, creative and strategy and planning. An overwhelming 75% of respondents said they invest in analytics, compared with the 68% that invest in strategy and planning and just 50% that invest in creative. To qualify as growth marketers, they must spread their resources across the funnel and invest in one upper, one mid and one lower or bottom funnel activity. They should also be tracking one performance marketing metric and one growth marketing metric. To distinguish themselves in the space, brands must focus on the middle of the funnel. Marketers underutilize paid social, influencer and affiliate marketing, according to the report, and could gain competitive advantages by diverting focus to these activities. For this reason, it is increasingly important for marketers and agencies alike to bring in multidisciplinary talent that understands which performance and growth metrics to prioritize and how. It can also be beneficial for brands to consolidate operations with one agency partner, according to the report, because a multiagency roster can deepen existing silos and make it harder for marketers to achieve balance. How Publicis’ Epsilon PeopleCloud Helps Smucker’s ID Its Customers and Tailor Messages to Them

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Marketers Must Balance Media Mix to Collapse Brand and Performance Silos

A recent report found just 41% of marketing leads understand growth marketing’s scope

Nandika Chatterjee

Olivia Morley

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Nandika Chatterjee

Olivia Morley