Short- and Long-Term Vision

Target Both Short- and Long-Term Results

We have talked about how your marketing programs must be linked to goals in order to help you evaluate and eventually maximize their performance.

It’s important to understand that your goals should demonstrate both short-term and long-term vision.

Short-term results are obviously very important, particularly those that deliver results to the company’s bottom line.

But components of your marketing program very likely will be geared toward the longer term – especially if you have multi-year marketing agreements such as sponsorships or naming rights deals in place.

Think about desirable future results – such as preserving and increasing marketing share.

Beware of setting goals such as “brand awareness” or “share of voice.” These are too generalized to generate much enthusiasm among your team, or indeed from the executive suite.

Compare that to the goal of capturing marketing share in an under-served geographic or demographic area. In contrast with “share of voice,” this is a measurable result that can guide both day-to-day and long-term decision-making.

The process of defining and quantifying your short- and long-term goals and assigning budget to each can be termed “marketing mix modeling.”

How much of your marketing budget is going toward short-term results? How much is building toward a strong market position in the future? Are the proportions appropriate, given the company’s position in the marketplace? If not, work toward rebalancing the budget.

As an example of an appropriate marketing mix, one of our clients, a global manufacturer of office supplies, signed a long-term sponsorship with one of America’s best-known universities.

• Short-term, the deal delivered an immediate win in terms of access to the university’s significant office-supply needs.
• Longer term, the deal offered benefits well beyond the ivy-covered walls, as the corporate business-to-business sales force was able to leverage the sponsorship assets nationwide, and even globally, given the university’s renown in the sports world.

The resulting ROI on this sponsorship was very high in context with other deals of this magnitude.