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For those of you who regularly read my blog, you may recall a posting in which I railed on Honda for running a full page branding ad in TIME Magazine. At the time the economy was in relatively good shape. Even so, it did not make sense to me why Honda would run very expensive print ads that did not point readers to a URL from which Honda could enhance the overall customer experience as well as provide a means to measure the ad's effectiveness.
Fast forward to today. In the BusinessWeek article, "Best Global Brands: Gutsy marketers spend into the teeth of a recession. Several of BusinessWeek's 100 Best Global Brands are doing exactly that," author Burt Helm reflects, "History shows that a recession can be an auspicious time to invest in a brand. Some of the most successful brand campaigns in the past six decades began during economically challenged years."
I understand the importance of building brand regardless of economic conditions. The BusinessWeek article drives a good point home in that those companies able to sustain brand efforts will pull out of the downturn in a better position than those that retrench. I won't argue that. However, the big difference between past economically distressed times and today is that we readily have the means to measure the success of our brand building campaigns.
There are several marketing automation, CRM and analytics tools that enable you to measure the impact of your brand campaigns. What's important is that your campaigns present the means to trigger those tools and allow measurement to take place. In addition, these tools deliver the ability to nurture opportunities generated from the campaigns.
Even with an abundance of tools, I'm surprised at how often I come across companies that are not measuring the impact of their marketing programs -- brand or otherwise.
To net it out, as you contemplate where and how to spend your marketing dollars, make sure you have the means and ability to measure the impact of the spend. Being able to measure the success of your programs and activities will give you much needed ammunition when looking for additional budget to sustain your efforts.
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