One of the biggest mistakes I see businesses make is focusing too much of their marketing budget on people who are already close to making a purchase.
I get it. If you’re measuring marketing performance on sales, leads or bookings (which let’s face it, most of us are), investing budget where you can see an immediate return feels like the safest option. Paid search, retargeting, email marketing and conversion-focused social campaigns can all be very effective because you’re targeting people who already have some level of intent.
And it works well….initially.
Targeting the same audience only gets you so far
The challenge is that there are only so many people who are actively looking to buy at any given time.
Before long, those audiences have seen the same ads so many times they start to become wallpaper. You’ve already reached a lot of the people who were most likely to buy and performance begins to slow down.
That’s usually when the temptation is to spend more.
But spending more won’t solve the problem if you’re still targeting the same people.
The messaging starts to lose its impact, the ads become familiar to the point they’re barely noticed, and you can end up paying more to get the same results.
I’ve seen this happen across different industries. Businesses continue spending more on conversion-focused activity because it’s easier to measure and easier to justify, while awareness activity gets pushed down the priority list.
The problem is that if there aren’t enough new people entering the funnel, you’re eventually left trying to squeeze more and more out of the same audience.
Awareness activity plays an important role
It doesn’t have to mean huge brand campaigns or big budgets. It can be as simple as using digital channels to get in front of new audiences who may not have heard of you yet.
The difficulty is that awareness activity doesn’t always deliver an immediate return, which can make it harder to justify when budgets are tight and results are under the microscope.
But that doesn’t mean it isn’t working.
I’ve seen this first-hand. In one business, sales dropped noticeably after awareness activity was reduced, despite no major changes being made to the conversion-focused campaigns. It was a good reminder that not every marketing channel works in isolation.
And it looks different in different industries
In regulated industries like healthcare and financial services, awareness activity helps build trust and credibility before somebody is ready to buy.
In other industries, it might simply be about building familiarity and helping your brand stand out when customers are weighing up their options.
Creating future demand is key for sustainable growth
Regardless of the industry, the principle is the same.
If all of your marketing activity is focused on people who are ready to buy today, you’re making it harder to grow tomorrow.
The businesses that tend to see the most sustainable growth are the ones doing both.
Converting existing demand is important. Creating future demand is too.