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Digital marketing strategies can shift overnight. New platforms, evolving customer behaviors, and rapid advances in AI continue to reshape how organizations connect with their audiences. For marketers, staying effective increasingly requires current, applied skills that connect strategy, analytics and execution.

The Digital Marketing Accelerator is a new intensive weekend program created for marketers who want to stay current in this constantly changing environment — without stepping away from their day-to-day responsibilities.

On the program page, an on-demand information session features Mark Krolick, Academic Director and Adjunct Professor of Executive Education, who introduces the program’s structure, audience, and learning focus. The session offers a practical overview of what participants will explore during the two-day, in-person experience.

The program integrates marketing, analytics and finance to strengthen digital decision-making. Participants examine how to translate business goals into actionable digital strategies, apply AI to enhance content and engagement, and evaluate performance using bidding methods and ROI frameworks. Sessions emphasize practical application, supported by interactive discussions and real-world examples.

A distinguishing feature of the program is its emphasis on cross-functional communication. Participants explore how to discuss digital priorities with finance leaders, senior executives and boards — an increasingly critical capability as digital investment continues to grow.

The weekend also includes a CFO panel discussion focused on how financial leaders evaluate digital marketing investments, offering perspective on measurement, accountability and decision-making at the enterprise level.

The Digital Marketing Accelerator is well-suited for practicing digital marketers, brand marketers transitioning into digital roles, and mid-to-senior-level professionals seeking a structured, current approach to digital strategy and measurement.

“Digital marketing today requires marketers to think strategically, analytically, and cross-functionally—all at once.”
— Mark Krolick, Academic Director

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The Journal of Interactive Marketing and the (IMRC) are pleased to announce a special issue focused on exploring the cross-disciplinary approaches to solving various challenges that marketers, consumers, and societies face today. The special track represents IMRC’s tradition for a timely and highly interactive discussion of new research ideas, preliminary findings, and ongoing research. We invite all interested researchers to submit their proposals to IMRC’s special track for constructive feedback. Researchers can then implement the initial feedback before submission to the special issue.

For this special issue, we encourage novel approaches to contemporary interactive marketing problems that rely on innovative data-driven methodological approaches or theoretical conceptualizations grounded in disciplines outside of business schools. We expect at least one of the coauthors to have a primary faculty appointment outside of a business school (in a non-business-related discipline). The preference will be given to papers grounded in disciplines that have yet to be widely represented in the marketing literature, such as computer science, data science, engineering, health care, history, life science, mathematics, network science, neuroscience, philosophy, physics, and political science, among others. We also welcome submissions that introduce novel methodological approaches or theoretical conceptualizations grounded in the disciplines that marketing scholarship traditionally has been drawing from, such as communication and media studies, economics, psychology, sociology, and statistics.

When submitting the work, we ask authors to highlight the unique contributions of the disciplines/researchers in their cover letters.

Updated Submission Deadline: January 31, 2025

Submitting Your Manuscript to the Special Issue

All submissions will be considered for publication in the Journal of Interactive Marketing, via a double-anonymous peer review, drawing on prominent scholars with interest and expertise in the area. Each manuscript may also be considered by prominent marketing practitioners and thought leaders.

Submissions must be made via the journal’s , with author guidelines available here. 

Special Issue Editors: and (Northeastern University)

Go to the Journal of Interactive Marketing

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Firms selling online content, mobile games, digital streaming, or software-as-a-service subscriptions can find it challenging to convert prospects who have not experienced their products prior to purchase. The freemium and free trial models allow customers to experience the content or services before they decide to buy.

In the freemium model, firms provide a basic version of a content or service line free of charge and an enhanced, premium version for a price. Customers can use the free version immediately, then upgrade to the premium option if they want enhanced features. On the other hand, a free trial offers a full product or service at no charge for a limited time, so customers can experience it and purchase it if they choose. In other words, the freemium model is feature/quality limited, while the free trial model is time-limited and, thus, a special case of the freemium model.

For example, Spotify uses the freemium model, offering an ad-supported free version along with a premium service with no ads. Dropbox offers a free version of its cloud service with limited storage capacity and premium versions with increased storage and additional features. Hootsuite, a popular social media management tool, LinkedIn and Skype offer other examples of the freemium model.

Examples of free trial models include those offered by many video streaming and software-as-a-service providers, such as Netflix and Adobe. Newspapers like the New York Times, which provides 20 free articles per month before readers must pay for more, often use the free trial model, as well.

So, when should firms select the freemium model over other strategies, and how can they optimize the model’s effect on their performance?

Selecting the Freemium Model

The freemium model is most effective when the marginal cost of an additional user is low—ideally zero, as is the case for digital goods like e-books and movies. Firms with high additional user costs must find ways to monetize their free users. Some firms, such as Spotify, monetize free customers through advertising. Mobile games monetize them by selling features through in-app purchases.

examine whether firms can benefit from adjusting the amount of content they offer for free when they use both advertising and paid subscription monetization strategies. The researchers find that firms should offer more free content during periods of high demand. They find the policy is especially optimal when consumers are heterogeneous in their valuation of online content varying over time.

Some firms move away from the freemium model once they have acquired enough customers. For example, they might transition to a time-bound free trial model, usually allowing immediate access to all their service/product features so customers can experience the premium value proposition. uses granular data from a leading software-as-a-service firm that provides prospects with free trials to examine the impact of various marketing touchpoints, different types of message content, and the frequency and variety of free-trial usage on consumers’ subscription decisions. The study shows that frequent free-trial usage can encourage conversion, but conversion rates decrease when users explore an increasing variety of products.

find that the average customer lifetime value of free trial users can be significantly lower than that of customers acquired through other channels, highlighting the importance of targeting when using the free trial model.

Optimizing the Freemium Model

Significant marketing literature has documented sampling strategies’ impact on repeat purchases. However, the research has not addressed prospective consumers’ uncertainty when purchasing a new content or service. The freemium model allows firms to attract users without spending on ad campaigns or a traditional sales force. Companies using the model often offer referral incentives, which are more appealing for free products or services. And with modern social networking, word-of-mouth is a more powerful driver of new customers than ever before.

The freemium model’s main objective is to grow a firm’s user base, then convert the users to paying customers. If the firm is unable to convert an adequate fraction of its free users to paying customers, the model fails. examine the impact of marketing actions on moving consumers from free to premium products/services and highlight the challenges in optimizing such a move.

The conversion rate from free to premium upgrades for most firms range between 2 – 5 percent. While a low conversion rate may indicate a firm’s premium version does not add significant value and/or the free version offers too much value, a high conversion rate may indicate the free offering does not attract as much attention as it should (). The optimal strategy is to attract high traffic and a moderate conversion rate. provide methodologies for forecasting premium conversions and increasing their number through targeting and reward policies.

A firm can differentiate its free and premium options on many dimensions, including features, usage level, and user characteristics. For example, a firm’s free version could have a significant response time delay—acceptable for a patient user but not for an impatient user, who would be more likely to upgrade. examine how free version feature quality and other design parameters affect premium conversions. The researchers show that an appropriately designed free version can act as a complement to the premium option, rather than being a substitute. Specifically, they find that higher-quality free content can drive sales of popular premium content.

Focusing on design, investigate extending premium product lines to spur demand for the existing version. In a field experiment focused on online book sales, the researchers found paperback titles accompanied by an additional premium version, either in e-book or hardcover format, achieved greater sales than titles without an additional premium version. Analyzing individual choice data in extended product line settings, the authors find both a compromise and attraction effect, leading to an increased free-to-premium conversion rate.  The optimal design of free trials is mainly focused on the length of free trials. Wang and Özkan-Seely (2018) develope a theoretical framework and suggest that firms can signal a higher quality of the paid products via a longer free-trial window.

Summary

The online environment provides firms opportunities to experiment with the freemium and free trial sales models. For example, many video streaming services launched using the free trial model. As the concept of streaming became well known, they stopped providing the trials, instead allowing customers to purchase and then cancel their services at any time.

While the freemium and free trial models can be effective marketing and sales tools, the major streaming services’ latest strategy shows that they are necessary only when customers are uncertain about a new product or service feature. Once customers understand a product/service category’s value proposition, either through experience or word-of-mouth, firms can replace their freemium and free trial models with traditional acquisition models.

Citation

Kannan, P.K., Xian Gu, and Hongshuang (Alice) Li (2022), “Selecting and Optimizing the Freemium Sales Model,” Impact at JMR, (February 14, 2023), Available at: /marketing-news/selecting-and-optimizing-the-freemium-sales-model/

References

Chica, Manuel, and William Rand (2017), “Building Agent-Based Decision Support Systems for Word-of-Mouth Programs: A Freemium Application,” Journal of Marketing Research, 54(5): 752–767. ()

Datta, Hannes, Bram Foubert, and Harald J. Van Heerde (2015), “The Challenge of Retaining Customers Acquired with Free Trials,” Journal of Marketing Research, 52(2): 217–234. ()

Gu, Xian, P.K. Kannan, and Liye Ma (2018), “Selling the Premium in Freemium,” Journal of Marketing, 82(6), 10–27. ()

Kumar, Vineet (2014), “Making ‘Freemium’ Work,” Harvard Business Review, 92(5), 27–29. ()

Lambrecht, Anja, and Kanishka Misra (2016), “Fee or Free: When Should Firms Charge for Online Content?” Management Science, 63(4), 1,150–1,165. ()

Li, Hongshuang (Alice) (2022), “Converting Free Users to Paid Subscribers in SaaS Contexts – The Impact of Usage, Marketing Touchpoints, and Message Content,” Forthcoming in Production and Operations Management. ()

Li, Hongshuang (Alice), Sanjay Jain, and P.K. Kannan (2019), “Optimal Design of Free Samples for Digital Products and Services,” Journal of Marketing Research, 56(3), 419–438. ()

Pauwels, Koen, and Allen Weiss (2008), “Moving from Free to Fee: How Online Firms Market to Change Their Business Model Successfully,” Journal of Marketing, 72(3), 14–31. ()

Wang, S., Özkan-Seely, G.F. 2018. Signaling product quality through a trial period. Operations Research, 66(2), 301-312.

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While these techniques are relatively instantaneous, low cost and can drive a high ROI, direct mail marketing can be just as effective, if not more effective, in reaching customers and prospects, even in our digital age. Read on to find our favorite tips for creating a strategic direct mail marketing campaign that will produce significant results for your organization.

What is Direct Mail Marketing?

Direct mail marketing involves sending physical correspondence to customers or prospects with the goal of getting them to patronize your business. Examples of direct mail may include catalogues, brochures, coupons, postcards, branded envelopes, letters, and poly-mailers.

Direct mail can be as simple or as intricate as your team wants. For instance, some organizations send packages like , and product samplers.

The goal of direct mail is to give consumers a tangible experience with your brand. You’ll also gain exposure, build rapport, and give customers more confidence in their purchase.

Notable Direct Mail Marketing Data and Benefits

Did you know that according to Forbes, per day? Between constant digital ads and overflowing email inboxes, it’s no wonder we often feel overwhelmed with how much media we are exposed to.

The good news? Direct mail can help. Sending a physical item in the mail is the perfect way for brands to “cut through the clutter” and stand out from competitors. In fact, many organizations see more responses from consumers via direct mail. Consider the following:

• found that direct mail is generally viewed as less “spammy” than unsolicited emails.
• A study by Postary found that direct mail open rates can vary between , about 3-4x higher than email open rates.
• The same study found that the average read rate of direct mail is around .
• Direct mail response rates hover between , while email has around 0.6%.

Did you know that direct mail also affects generations differently? Consider the following:

• Millennials (b. 1981-1996) are the listed on direct mail.
• (b. 1965-1980) want experiences that blend physical and digital channels.
• (b. 1946-1964) say mail feels more personal than digital communications.
• (b. 1997-2012) will buy from brands with positive reviews (which can be featured in direct mail).

Direct mail marketing can help at any stage in a marketing campaign. It can be an initial touchpoint to introduce a consumer to your brand, or it can push a consumer through the sales funnel towards a purchase. A piece of mail could mean the difference between making (or breaking) your revenue goals.

While the cost of direct mail advertising can be high, a well-executed piece can make it well worth the investment. Use the following tips to ensure your success.

Build a Successful Direct Marketing Campaign: 7 Tips to Steal

Creating a solid direct mail campaign may seem intimidating, However, you may find that this strategy is just as effective as your digital marketing methods, especially if you utilize the following strategies. Here’s how to get started.

1. Target the right audience with the right offer.

Defining your audience is an essential step for any successful , especially if you’re just getting started. Make sure to clearly define what types of people you’re trying to sell to. It can be helpful to draw some generalizations, including the following:

• What is the age range of your audience?
• What is the gender of your audience?
• What is their educational background?
• What purchasing power do they have?
• Where do they live or operate?
• What are their consumer behaviors?
• What media platforms do they use?
• What motivates them to make a purchase?

Your overall goal is to to determine who you’re trying to sell to. Then, understand what motivates them to buy. What do they want or need from you as a company? Appeal to these interests with direct mail marketing.

2. Determine your mailing lists and techniques.

Once you’ve established a set of target buyer personas, you’ll need a high-quality mailing list. This step is key, as you cannot create a highly successful or appealing offer without knowing who you’re mailing to. Sending your mailers to the wrong audience can even alienate the right prospects, causing your team to lose money.

There are two types of mailing lists: an in-house mailing list and a third-party list rental:

• An in-house mailing list contains names of people you’ve already established a relationship with, including current customers, past customers, and people who have inquired about your product or service in the past.
• A third-party list rental contains a curated list of names that has been purchased or rented from a full-service direct mail company.

Renting a mailing list is a great way to procure new contacts outside of your customer database. Not only is renting less expensive than buying, but it is also less of a commitment since you are not responsible for maintaining the list. The only catch is that you cannot own the information on a rented mailing list. You will, however, still receive the contact information of people who respond to your campaign.

3. Define direct mail campaign KPIs.

If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Therefore, data is an important part of optimizing your direct mail campaign. Establishing your key performance indicators (KPIs) will help your team set itself up for success, while also seeing which tactics work and which don’t. Create a discussion around the following:

• What outcomes do we want from this campaign?
• What methods can we use to track our success?
• How often will we check on the progress of the campaign?
• How will we track and report our return on investment (ROI)?
• How will we adjust and make improvements?

By establishing expectations beforehand, your team will be more likely to hit its goals. Make a point to learn from mistakes and re-direct marketing dollars toward your most effective strategies.

4. Incorporate branding into direct mail marketing campaigns.

Design plays a huge role in hosting a great direct mail campaign. The right design can catch a prospect’s eye, guide them through your advertisement, and ultimately get them to act—all in a highly visual and appealing way. Great design should always adhere to your brand standards and be easily recognizable in the mailbox. Here are a few pointers our team can share with you:

• Incorporate your organization’s colors and logo. It should be obvious that the piece is coming from your company. The best mailers orient consumers and grab their attention.
  
  
• Experiment with basic color theory. Different colors can have different psychological effects on consumers. For example, use red for urgency, orange for enthusiasm, purple for luxury, or green for sustainability.
  
  
• Avoid using a lackluster design. Pops of color and eye-catching designs go a long way. If you can’t catch their eyes within a few seconds, your piece of mail may go straight in the recycling bin.
  
  
• Leverage a QR code for easy website access. Make it easier than ever for smartphone users to gain instant access to your website! A matrix-style code eliminates the need to type a URL.
  
  
• Add variable data. Switch out copy or headlines based on different lists, behavior, or buying habits. In most cases, variable data printing delivers better results than generalized printing.
  
  
• Use A/B testing. Not sure which design will work best? Create two options and see which design fosters the best response.

When in doubt, keep tweaking your designs until you find something that works. You’ll have greater success if you keep your designs fresh and intriguing.

5. Use concise messaging with a single call to action.

In addition to design, you will want to incorporate a clear message on your piece of mail. You’ll also want to include a call to action (CTA). A CTA leverages command words that tell the consumer what action you’d like them to take. Great CTA examples include the following:

• Buy now.
• Order today.
• Shop the sale.
• Download your copy.
• Subscribe today.
• Visit the website.
• Get the coupon.
• Read more.

A tip we often give is to provide a simple URL that a reader can type in to learn more about your offer. A great way to add further intrigue is to offer a link to a free guide, checklist, or piece of content that’s gated by a short form. This way, you’ll obtain the person’s email address for future marketing efforts. 

6. Track the ROI of direct mail marketing campaigns.

Determining the return on investment (ROI) of your direct mail campaign isn’t just about increasing sales or leads. You also need to track the data associated with your campaign to examine where your successes lie. Tracking methods will help you ensure accuracy and performance of all direct mail efforts.

Want to accurately gauge response rates? You can track direct mail ROI digitally through reliable tracking methods and success metrics, including the following:

1. Use a trackable URL.
2. Use a trackable QR code.
3. Use a trackable phone number.
4. Use a scannable coupon code.
5. Use a unique promo code.

As a rule of thumb, every contact method on your direct mail piece (I.e., phone number, landing page, coupon code, etc.) should be unique and trackable. You want an accurate way to attribute sales and leads to your campaign.

7. Utilize the value of strategic repetition.

Consider the following: Would you rather market to a smaller audience multiple times, or a bigger audience only once?Chances are that your smaller, more concise audience will remember your marketing message better than a large audience that only hears from you once.

Marketers know that a strategic use of repetition is key to helping consumers remember your brand. It is for this reason that having a concise and reliable mailing list is important. In addition, most businesses have a limited marketing budget, so using repetition to your advantage is key. We suggest using direct mail in tandem with other media channels (I.e. email, social media, PPC, paid advertisements) to continuously reach your audience.

Get the Marketing Strategy Guide for Free!

While devising a direct mail campaign is exciting, this is just one piece of a professional marketer’s strategy puzzle. Our free eBook on covers a variety of useful topics, including how to formulate buyer personas, build brand loyalty, boost web traffic, generate sales leads, and strengthen your marketing strategy. Download your free copy today!

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By Thomas Anderson, Sarah Mier, David Novak and Mat Zucker

A new wave of détente is developing across corporate marketing departments. And those who are collaborating well are finding it a critical component to unlocking value and revenue growth. 

Brand marketing and demand generation teams—faced with growing complexity of spending decisions—are working together more often and marketing executives are eager to have a more holistic conversation about them. The traditional tensions between them, which can undercut growth and harm performance, are easing as both look for new ways to engage customers and increase sales.

Change has always been a constant in marketing, but today’s industry feels different. Senior marketing leaders say the scope and speed of changes they confront each day make decisions more difficult. Given the pace of change, marketers are looking for ways to improve and optimize their campaign and media spending.  

Even though companies have oceans of data, insights and powerful personalization tools, customers are harder to attract and engage. The paths they follow to purchase are no longer linear as they move through an increasingly omnichannel world. And just as the external marketing rules are being rewritten—often in real time—internal guidance is shifting. There are more stakeholders with new demands.

The most successful marketers say that because their agile test-and-learn approaches help optimize results, they’ve taken a more disciplined approach to experimentation.

Marketers must make hard tradeoffs with finite resources and face pressure to do more with less, even as tried-and-true best practices fall by the wayside. With an urgent need to be more customer-centric, the classic “marketing funnel” concept, for instance, becomes more limited in its relevance.

Against this backdrop, brand marketing, which typically describes efforts to drive awareness and build equity, and demand marketing, which aims at getting audiences to take immediate action or conversion, are working together more closely, finding new and more efficient ways to reach customers.

The most successful marketing organizations actively try to bridge these divides. Indeed, as our research shows, in the most successful companies, these relationships are blossoming into a brand-demand love story. And these organizations offer practical lessons for all marketers.

Definitions are blurring as marketing technology and automation evolves to shift possibilities and expectations. “What is brand and what is demand?” asked Karla Davis, vice president of marketing, Ulta Beauty, a company actively integrating its marketing capabilities. “The answer seemed a little gray, but as we created opportunities to better operate cross-functionally within marketing, we’ve unlocked greater impact and influence internally and externally.”

What the Most Successful Marketers Have in Common

We at Prophet, an international brand management company, went directly to marketers to understand how they think about the relationship between brand and demand. We first explored the topic through interviews with over 10 senior marketing leaders. We then took our learnings and hypotheses from those conversations, fielded a survey with more than 500 global marketing and advertising professionals to further understand how they are thinking about the topic—and what separates those that are using brand and demand to successfully fuel business results.

The most successful marketing organizations are focused on three key characteristics.

Focus on fewer–and more meaningful–business objectives

Today’s marketers might gauge their success in dozens of ways. And you might expect that those in performance marketing would gravitate toward one set and brand leaders another. Not so. The most successful organizations say that customer lifetime value, improving brand loyalty and enhancing brand trust are the objectives that matter most.

Conversely, those working at organizations they consider less successful are more likely to prioritize creating a seamless customer experience, enhancing digital marketing support and coordination with channel partners as objectives. 

Senior marketing executives believe in the value of connecting marketing’s investment to key business performance indicators. Reporting progress in terms of value versus oblique marketing metrics is a best practice. They’ve found corporate boards don’t want to hear about clicks.

“Your job as a marketer is explaining what the impact to the business will be if we shut down brand or demand marketing,” says Portia Mount, vice president of marketing at Trane Technologies. “Marketers can get spiritually exhausted explaining value to the business. We look at pipeline and shadow metrics to connect back to our business agenda.”

There may be a tendency to connect brand and demand marketing to specific channels. But there is also an opportunity to think more holistically, using the channel ecosystem to achieve key marketing objectives. Marketers also note an increase in cross-channel coordination aligned to customer segments and business objectives instead of teams focusing on channel-centered optimization.

Experiment. All the time.

It is clear that marketers can no longer follow last year’s playbook. Many companies believe they’ve instilled a test-and-learn mentality because they occasionally use pilot efforts. But the most successful marketers say that because their agile test-and-learn approaches help optimize results, they’ve taken a more disciplined approach to experimentation.

They describe the need to integrate their planning process to include both brand and demand functions as an essential way to make more thoughtful bets. “I like to think of my marketing investment like a financial portfolio,” says Marissa Jarratt, 7-Eleven’s chief marketing officer. “I make sure we are invested in bonds that will deliver returns in a predictable manner year-over-year. And then I think about how we can take on new risks. We should think of our spend as a portfolio of risk deployment.”

Some call this disciplined experimentation a “learning agenda.” An executive at one company with brand and demand goals, for example, routinely categorizes experimentation levers by spend allocation, channel mix, targeting and tracking, brand and creative and incentive and urgency.

To maximize learning, the most successful marketers combine both leading and lagging indicators. That allows them to predict both financial outcomes and consumer behaviors. This ensures they can make faster course corrections when a bet fizzles out.

Redefine customer centricity

Amid so much customer data, it’s easy for organizations to think they are customer-centric. But true customer centricity requires a constant commitment to deeper understanding. It’s what can help brands build relentless relevance, which our ongoing shows is an essential ingredient for companies.

The most effective marketers make customer centricity a constant goal. Senior leaders stress the value of deeply knowing customers. Growing trends to increase that knowledge include building centralized teams to synthesize market insights, developing integrated go-to-market plans, creating or managing assets, and developing strategies for digital channels.

At the same time, they’re working to link enterprise or corporate teams, where brands are often managed, to the business and product teams that are accountable for demand.

“The transition our organization needs to make is from a siloed linear approach to more agile, ‘brains in room’ format,” says Tyrrell Schmidt, chief marketing officer of TD Bank, U.S. “We want to build a structure that puts the customer at the center.”

One of Jarratt’s favorite examples includes an ad campaign that grew out of social immersion. It identified a trend of customers posting photos of their cars in 7-Eleven parking lots, an insight that was infused into marketing campaigns and brand experience.

“Customers are telling us something that they believe about themselves and their relationship with 7-Eleven,” she says. “And those are the insights we need to drive the business forward.”

It’s Time to Rebuild the Marketing Function

Companies need the power of both brand and demand marketing to transform and become digitally converged enterprises. In the most successful organizations, the two disciplines are already closely linked. Focusing on taking the relationships to the next level can help companies achieve uncommon growth.

Even in organizations actively trying to bridge the divide between brand and demand marketing, that’s hard. Competitive tension still exists, with each striving to prove their efforts produce more substantial, measurable results. Typical marketing organizations exacerbate the problem by creating two teams that often plan and invest in silos.

“There are the performance people and then the brand people,” says Jennifer Warren, Indeed.com’s vice president of global brand marketing. “And that gets in the way of doing what we need to do.”

The biggest challenge continues to be creating balanced budgets and allocating investments equitably. Many marketing leaders confess to being “obsessed” with finding the right investment mix. There’s plenty of conventional wisdom: One common industry standard is the 60/40 rule, an investment recommendation proposed by study. The thesis calls for allocating 60% of the marketing budget to brand efforts and 40% to demand.

No matter how cherished your brand’s logo, package or product might be, product categories are evolving around you, and your brand has to evolve with it.

Such rules of thumb offer quick, evidence-based solutions. They also help defend brand investments. And many marketers feel compelled to do that, as they’ve watched e-commerce and digital gain the upper hand in budget battles over the last 15 years.

However, such rules aren’t good enough anymore. They may not fully account for the many variables of consumer behavior, broader market trends or the specific business contexts companies face. Modeling investment and measurement decisions using product lifecycle stages, such as product launches and mature offerings, can better track progress toward specific goals.

Sudden market shifts and disruptions mean it’s critical to develop more agile planning and budgeting processes. “It’s not about finding the perfect proportions to balance brand and demand,” says Ashley LaPorte, director at communications firm Rally, “but finding a flexible framework that understands how everything connects.”

To meld brand and demand in this new and future-focused way, there are four action steps marketers can take now. These can smooth the connections between brand and demand marketing, maximizing the value of each.

1. Design: Build a marketing organization with the skills and capabilities for both brand and demand, with teams working together to support a shared purpose. Create and empower a marketing operations function to orchestrate and manage resources across shifting priorities, continually improve marketing processes, and measure performance against business objectives.
2. Plan: Beginning with annual plans, integrate all marketing approaches. Marketing can guide this process for commercial and product lines. Consider using the customer journey as a canvas rather than the conventional channel approach. Build to support business objectives, not only marketing goals and prioritize initiatives and activities together.
3. Experiment: The use of test-and-learn efforts need constant reinforcement. Write a specific learning agenda and provide an investment budget that can be opportunistic during the calendar year as well as tackle emerging channels and technologies.
4. Measure: Track performance and progress with an integrated brand and demand view. Report to the C-suite as a unified marketing team with shared goals.

Ulta Beauty, the leading U.S. beauty retailer, is an example of how significant the impact is when creating a more collaborative marketing function. The company sought to recalibrate its marketing model and shift from product and category-focused operations to a more integrated approach, keeping customers at the center. The company aimed to balance brand-building with demand efforts for the many brands it sells to beauty lovers.

Ulta Beauty’s marketing operations team tracks, reports, prioritizes and redeploys resources to create more agility and importantly, to maintain focus on customer and business needs.

“We pushed to think differently about our structure and what would serve us best in the short- and long-term,” says Karla Davis, vice president of marketing at Ulta. “This effort led to greater synergy, efficiency and ultimately effectiveness across our growing marketing organization. And it did so in ways that benefit our teams, brand partners and ultimately our guests.”

Moving Toward Marketing Integration

Brand and demand marketing have much in common. Both are under intense pressure to make every dollar count. Both are asked to deliver more with less, even as customer journeys have grown more complex and less linear. And while new digital tools and tracking technologies have sharpened their efforts, an overabundance of data has slowed marketers down at a time when speed and agility are at a premium.

There’s no need to pick sides, choosing brand over demand or vice versa. Instead, innovative companies are clarifying how both tactics deliver on shared outcomes. They also have unique operating models and capabilities to maximize experimentation and keep their customers at the heart of their efforts. And they’re doing all this in service of achieving business objectives shared by the whole organization.

They know brand and demand-generating activation can no longer be viewed as competing functions. Instead, they are interdependent, reinforcing capabilities that comprise the core of the overall customer experience.

This change bears repeating: Brand and demand are writing a new love story. They’ve long been drawn to each other’s strengths. They can compensate for the other’s shortcomings. And it’s about how the ultimate power couple can help companies achieve uncommon growth.

Thomas Anderson is an engagement manager, digital at Prophet, the global consultancy. Based out of the Chicago office, he works with organizations to enhance customer acquisition and retention efforts across digital touchpoints.

Sarah Mier is a senior engagement manager out of the Prophet San Francisco office. She is focused on driving growth through customer empathy and rich market insight in fast-moving categories, including media, technology, and retail. Experience includes Google, Atlassian, Facebook, Autodesk, and recently launched cybersecurity brand, Trellix.

David Novak, a senior partner and co-leader of marketing & sales in Prophet’s New York office, is an expert in digital transformation strategy, with extensive experience in customer experience innovation, marketing/advertising technology rationalization, and performance marketing consulting.

Mat Zucker is a senior partner and digital marketing leader based in Prophet’s New York office. Co-leader of the firm’s global marketing & sales practice, Mat helps clients transform digitally, finding new areas of growth in marketing, content and communications.

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The Importance of PPC Using Google Ads

More and more marketers and businesses are taking advantage of the benefits of PPC advertising and Google Ads in order to reach new audiences, build brand awareness, and increase revenue.

Some website owners and marketers think, “Why would I pay to appear on Google when I can get my site to show up for free?” The answer is that it is not as easy to appear in the search results as you might think, even with expert, professional SEO services. It takes a lot of time and work to achieve high organic rankings on Google for the keywords you want to rank for.

While SEO is definitely worth the effort, you can in the meantime. Plus, PPC gives you more control over how your web page appears in the search results. Pay-per-click ads are an effective and integral part of any digital marketing strategy.

What is a PPC Campaign?

PPC is an acronym that stands for pay-per-click. Pay-per-click is an advertising model that allows you to advertise on Google and appear in the search results. Google PPC is used by millions of businesses all over the world. PPC marketing is a powerful, yet cost-effective way to raise awareness for your brand, drive traffic to your website, and boost sales.

How Google Ads Works

Google Ads is Google’s PPC advertising solution and the most commonly used PPC advertising network. It allows businesses and marketers to bid on keywords for the chance to show ads in the Google search results. Since Google is the most popular search engine, using Google Ads is a no-brainer.

The Importance of PPC Marketing for Marketers

If you are not currently doing any PPC marketing, you are most likely losing out on valuable web traffic — and revenue. Every marketer should have at least a basic knowledge of . Google pay-per-click ads can have a major impact on many brands and businesses.

The Benefits of Pay Per Click Advertising

There are several benefits to adding pay per click advertising expert to your marketing repertoire:

PPC Helps You Reach Your Marketing Goals

If you want to achieve quick results for your clients, PPC is the answer. Whether your goal is brand awareness or driving e-commerce sales, pay-per-click ads can help.

PPC is Fast and Effective

Once you learn how to create and optimize a pay-per-click campaign, it is fairly simple to get a campaign up and running. Pay-per-click advertising is a proven fast and effective strategy to get results. PPC offers quicker results than an SEO campaign. Plus, many clients appreciate PPC ads because they are cost-effective. As the name indicates, you only pay for the ad placement when you get a click.

PPC is Easy to Measure and Track

If you want to demonstrate your success for your clients, PPC using Google Ads is easy to measure and track. (Especially if you use the Google Ads tool in combination with Google Analytics.) Google makes it easy to see how your PPC campaigns are performing. It is never difficult to measure the effectiveness of your advertising with Google Ads PPC campaigns.

PPC Offers Easy Entry

Even if you are a little late to the pay-per-click game, it is and get it up and running quickly. Plus, you can optimize your ads as you go to ensure that they are effective.

PPC Using Google Ads Helps You Cast a Wide Net

Pay-per-click ads can help get your brand in front of new customers. Email and social media marketing tend to target people who are already aware of your brand. These strategies . But with PPC ads, you have the opportunity to cast a wide net to find new potential customers.

Pay Only When Someone Clicks

As the name suggests, PPC ads on Google mean you only have to pay money for the ad when someone actually, well, clicks on it. Though Google does show the ad only to searchers who are looking for related relevant topics or products, it is likely that anyone who is shown your ad will be interested and might click.

PPC Allows You to Limit Your Ad Spend

No one wants to go over their advertising budget. Google Ads allows you to set a limit on your daily and monthly ad spend. Plus, you can see exactly how your budget has been spent in Google Ads and optimize your campaign going forward.

Advertise Anywhere

Google Ads allows you to advertise to potential customers based on their location. This means you can advertise your business locally (within a matter of miles) or to people in entire regions, countries, or even to . This makes Google Ads PPC ideal for both small businesses and enterprises. Google Ads also allows additional targeting, so you can appeal to specific audiences. 

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