When in crisis or just when seeing a decline in sales, you normally want to do something about it and increase the number of sales again. If you want to increase the sales of your brand you have many alternatives. One is advertising. This is probably the alternative most people would think of. However, even if you decide that advertising is the right choice moving forward, you have many alternatives when it comes to advertising.
One of those choices is the one between brand advertising and direct advertising. I’m not saying that one is better than the other, however, I believe from what I’ve seen that many people in this situation are going for brand advertising and I think this often is the wrong decision.
Why?
Direct advertising can be measured and you know if you have succeeded with it or not. This is most often not the case with brand advertising. Also, direct advertising benefits a lot from a higher number of data points, which brand advertising (if successful) often results in. So why not make sure that your direct marketing is on point before moving on with brand advertising (if at all)?
These are two reasons why I think a lot of companies do take the brand advertising route:
- It’s immeasurable. This should be a reason not to choose it, but this also makes the employee making the decision feel more secure. Since if something goes wrong, he or she can always say “It was impossible to know what this would result in, I made a bet on our brand and if the advertising didn’t work it is because of the brand, not me”.
- You might hit the jackpot. You know that direct marketing won’t just blow up from day one and make you millions. Nope, it is hard work and eventually, you can see the results. But with brand advertising, you might think and hope that the campaign will just explode, go viral, and result in millions and millions. Well… that is like putting your company money in the lottery. You can’t know if it will happen, and if it happens you are not sure about how to recreate the same success.