Call it Below-the-line marketing, brand activation or promotional marketing ~ these are taking on the traditional advertising companies and winning. Promotions related spends are over the ATL spends for some time now (ref. http://promomagazine.com/ for the Promo Spends Survey). Also the BTL spends are going to grow faster in the time to come. However, this is old news – interesting to discuss why and what works.
Ability to relevantly filter the TG and “almost” individually target with customized brand communication to initiate desired action is where we are headed. And that’s what the BTL communication is all about - not brand building but brand usage. Focused from concept to implementation on return generated on the marketing dollars.
I believe Google is the largest BTL agency around (for that matter the largest marketing and communication agency around – definitely the fastest growing). Adwords – the big revenue churner – is but a classic example of filtered audience {filtered by way of what you are looking for and where are you looking for the service }, served relevant and customized messages {geographic and content-specific} to initiate action {click thru} and the model is entirely ROI driven. The spillage of message on irrelevant audience or geography is no longer a concern.
Adwords revenues for Google (and hence spends which have moved away from the traditional advertisement pie) and the fast adaptation to the model by advertisers at enterprise level as well as SMBs is an indication of things to come.
While the agency business model is not going to be dependent on the final “sale” the closer the model can come to the sale the more future ready the model is.
