How Short-Term Marketing Decisions Affect Your Long-Term Financial Upside

Marketing has drastically changed over the last 20 years with the introduction of social media. Even if you were trained in marketing strategies years ago, chances are you are not familiar with the current platforms your customers are using. Short-term marketing strategies are important for immediate boosts in business, but they do not guarantee long-term growth or success on their own. 

Short-Term vs. Long-Term Marketing

Short-term marketing strategies, according to Launch-Marketing, are “those that produce a temporary boost in business and traffic.” Examples include reduced pricing promotions, group offers, pay-per-click advertising, and tradeshows. Each of these will gain new customers by convincing those who are wavering or introducing your product to your target market. When starting a business or introducing a new product, short-term marketing is crucial. 

Long-term marketing strategies, according to Launch-Marketing, “establish brand awareness and continue to produce results even years down the road.” These strategies include search engine optimization, public relations, publishing and promoting content, and social media. Long-term marketing takes longer, but it establishes brand awareness and keeps your product or service at the forefront of customers’ minds. 

Which is Better?

If you’re wondering which marketing strategies in which you should invest most of your time and budget, there is no clear answer. Using only long-term marketing will miss opportunities for introducing your product to new customers, while short-term strategies focus so much on price it may make customers disloyal. You should have a balance between long and short-term marketing, but according to WARC, “52% of advertisers are confident their organization has the right balance between long-term brand-building and short-term performance marketing.” This is concerning, and most likely an attributing factor of failing businesses. A perfect balance of long and short-term marketing will directly affect your organization’s financial performance. 

Marketing and Budget

In order to continue to grow your business, you will need both types of marketing strategies as well as a pre-planned budget. According to Nick Mangiapane, chief marketing officer of Commerce Signals, “[m]ost marketers try to reserve at least 10% of their budget for testing and learning.” This means you need to reserve money for trial and error specifically for marketing strategies, both long and short-term. 

If you want to know how your marketing decisions are affecting your finances, keep track of your strategies and the direct outcomes. Dedicate time and money to this process, and you will start to see results. Once you have those results, you can adjust accordingly.