The Concept Of Marketing Assets vs. Payments For Performance

The traditional model of attracting new customers to a business involves a monthly payment towards marketing.  Businesses tend to approach this in an unplanned manner focusing only on business development when they are feeling the pinch of a slow sales period.  Moving to a more planned and sustainable model requires a shift in perspective.  Building marketing assets allows a business to change their monthly payments into monthly investments.

Direct mail, Pay-Per-Click, Radio, Billboard and TV are effective marketing platforms that can drive short term sales and increase brand awareness.  Once these campaigns end there is usually little left in the way of a reusable marketing asset.  This outbound marketing approach requires large amounts of capital.  

Imagine that your capital is coal and the outbound marketing platform (direct mail, pay-per-click, etc.) is a furnace powering your marketing engine and therefore represents your company sales.  Shoveling coal into the furnace yields a small amount of prospective new customers.  Stop shoveling the coal into the furnace and the marketing engine slows to a halt- potentially slowing sales as well.

Inbound marketing, an industry buzz word describing an alternative approach to marketing, focuses on investing in blogging, eBooks and guides, as well as offers covering all parts of the buyers journey.  Now more than ever, customers are seeking information and resources to understand the value a service provider offers, or to use in making educated purchasing decisions.  The investments in this type of marketing creates a resulting increase in the real assets a company owns.  Assets that can be re-used in future marketing campaigns. The Concept Of Marketing Assets will transform the way you invest in advertising. 

Now we change our coal analogy to bricks and we build a solid marketing foundation with our capital.  These marketing assets pay dividends for their useful life which exceeds that of an outbound marketing campaign significantly.  As we increase our assets over time the dividends, by way of new Market Qualified Leads, Sales Qualified Leads and New Customers, increase as well.

Investing in marketing assets, or Inbound Marketing, cannot by itself replace your Outbound Marketing payments.  Just like diversifying your financial investment portfolio, your marketing focus must be placed in the short- and long-term arenas.  Failure to adequately plan for the future could result in paying rent for the life of your business, rather than paving a road towards ownership.  Are you planning for growth within your marketing portfolio?  Let's discuss your marketing plan.