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Long-Term Brand Building vs Short-Term Sales Uplift

  • Marie-Louise Cleeren
  • May 16
  • 6 min read

Updated: Aug 26

In the age of digital marketing, traditional branding seems to be sorely neglected in B2B, if not forgotten altogether. As a B2B marketing consultant, I see that many tech and IT companies today spend far too little time and money (sometimes even zero) on "brand awareness" and go straight for "sales activation" activities (i.e. lead-generation / conversion aka performance marketing). But what they fail to realize is that the latter usually doesn't work without first doing the former, so their marketing investments end up a costly lesson in wasted budget and resources.


Let me explain why, so you don’t have to scratch your head wondering why you don’t see the growth you were expecting from your lead generation or sales campaigns.


Two ways marketing works


In marketing management there is an acclaimed book by Les Binet and Peter Field called ”The Long and the Short of It: Balancing Short and Long-Term Marketing Strategies” (published 2013), which talks about the two ways marketing works. 

Long-Term Brand Building vs Short-Term Sales Uplift
Figure: Two ways marketing works. Source: ”The Long and the Short of It” (Figure 58); Les Binet & Peter Field; 2013.

  • The long is about brand-building, top of the funnel (TOFU), emotional priming and communicating a bigger creative idea to future potential buyers with the intention to create a positive perception and long-term (lasting) memory of the brand that will be activated at the time of purchase.

  • The short is about targeted, bottom of the funnel (BOFU), rational product messaging, trying to generate an immediate response or action.


In their book, Binet & Field also explain why an accumulation of the short does not deliver the long, meaning that a short-term sales activation focus unfortunately doesn’t build brand equity for future sales. Expressed differently, performance marketing – ads with short-term sales activation goals – does not lead to long-term sales, market-share and profit growth. However, long-term brand campaigns have proven to impact both short-term sales activation and long-term sales growth.


The reasons for this are two-fold:


1. Volume growth can be immediate but profit growth takes time to fully realize


Short-term sales activation campaigns are focused on getting a direct response, typically triggered by discount pricing, an incentive or a time-limited promotional offer that leads to incremental sales uplifts (volume increase). Brand campaigns, however, work long-term by increasing the esteem of your brand and improving profit margins – customers that like, identify with and trust your brand become less price sensitive.


2. Human psychology: emotions are the primary driver of behavior


Empirical research by neuroscientists have shown that emotions are the primary driver of behavior, not rational information-processing.


In the book ”Thinking Fast and Slow” (published 2011), Daniel Kahneman, world-famous psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, explained the two systems in our brain that drive the way we think, which helps us understand the psychology behind our decision-making processes. "System 1" is fast, instinctive and emotional, operating with little to no effort; "System 2" is slow, deliberate, and conscious, requiring intentional effort.


Binet & Field applies this model to marketing management to help us understand how people make decisions about brands and purchases. System 1 drives long-term brand preferences: people are attracted to brands they feel good about, with little conscious thought. System 2 will be processing the rational product and pricing information at the time of purchase, but, in practice, is looking to confirm the long-term preference that System 1 has established. In other words, at the time of purchase, people try to justify their emotional decision by finding some rational arguments to back up their instinctive preference.


Rational, more fact-based arguments are more easily forgotten, and therefore have little effect on brand perception, long-term sales or profit growth. Emotional priming, on the other hand, is long-lasting. Feelings are remembered longer than rational messages.

 

These are important take-aways for tech and IT companies that are typically more comfortable communicating rational product messaging, rather than building emotional attachment to the brand. This probably has to do with tech scale-ups being very engineering focused. Founders and leadership teams often have an engineering background and have yet to include a seasoned marketing and communications professional in the executive management team who can prioritize and drive these topics.


You can read more about rational versus emotional arguments to build your brand and trigger customer buying behavior in this SUNMICO article from 2023: ”Lessons about emotional communication in marketing & advertising”.


Now, let’s tie these learnings to the customer buying journey.


The 95/5 rule in B2B


The customer buying journey in B2B is usually long and complex. According to research (https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/b2b-institute/b2b-research/trends/95-5-rule), corporations change service providers on average once every five years.

The 95/5 rule in B2B
The 95-5 rule in B2B. Sources: The 95-5 Rule; LinkedIn; article by Ty Heath. ”The Long and the Short of It: Balancing Short and Long-Term Marketing Strategies"; Les Binet & Peter Field; 2013. SUNMICO take-aways, Jan 2025.

95% of potential buyers aren’t ready to buy today. These 95% are not in market today, but will be in market sometime in the future. Therefore, we need to continuously create awareness to be top of mind when customers enter the market.


To grow a brand – and create future sales – you need to advertise to people who aren’t in the market now (95%), so that when they do enter the market (become one of the 5%), your brand is one they are familiar with, trust and like. If they don’t know your brand when they enter the market, then it’s already too late and you won’t even get considered.


B2B marketing should therefore focus on building positive memory links for your brand in the buyers’ minds. That memory link will be activated when the buyer does come into the market. This is why long-term brand awareness activities are crucial for your company’s growth.


If you don’t invest in brand awareness, and only focus on more short-term sales activation campaigns, you will be targeting only the 5% who are ready to buy but who likely have never even heard of you. At that stage, it is unlikely they will choose you over other well-known and trusted alternatives.


Sustainable growth requires a combo of long-term and short-term marketing tactics


In order to successfully build your brand and ensure long-run profitability and market-share growth, you therefore need to have a sensible balance between brand (long-term) and activation (short-term) activities. Both are needed, but they require different marketing tactics and messaging. Some marketing channels tend to work better for brand awareness (emotional priming and building trust) and others for sales activation (rational messaging). You need to learn when, why and how to use what.


”Ideally multi-channel campaigns will be designed to provoke both kinds of response [long-term and short-term] in balance, so that the effects are optimized over all timescales. Emotional priming makes people more receptive to rational messages, and so amplifies short-term responses. Rational activation unlocks the short-term sales potential of the brand, converting brand equity more powerfully into sales.” Les Binet & Peter Field; ”The Long and the Short of It: Balancing Short and Long-Term Marketing Strategies" (page 59); 2013.

How much budget should you spend on brand vs sales activation?


Based on the above, it seems that an optimal budget allocation is to spend a larger part of your marketing budget on brand building campaigns than on short-term activation, so that when a potential buyer becomes ”in market”, your brand is top of mind in that category.


According to Binet & Field, the optimal balance is a 60-40 ratio. Some modern digital marketing agencies I have spoken with suggest a more even spend, but this probably depends on the complexity of your product and industry, and the media cost for reaching your prospective buyers. I would suggest coupling a larger brand awareness campaign with an always-on presence in digital media to help engage your audience and meet purchase intent.


The lesson learned here is that you need to ensure a marketing mix, meaning a suitable balance between long-term brand awareness and short-term sales activation efforts. The objective is to achieve equal share of voice within brand and activation.


If you need help with this balancing act and to create suitable go-to-market strategy and campaigns for your company, feel free to reach out to SUNMICO – we’re here to help.

 

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