When people think of world-renowned sportswear giants (and big comms spenders) like Adidas, they probably don’t think of brands that are reaching around in the dark when it comes to their marketing efforts. However, until 2016 the sports giant didn’t even do any brand tracking and didn’t know what was effective in driving sales.
And the steps it took to correct this, and the lessons it learnt along the way, provide some great learnings for any brand in the B2B world. In particular, Adidas’ marketing missteps provide valuable lessons for B2B comms professionals seeking to improve their own marketing effectiveness.
What was the issue?
In short, Adidas had been focusing too heavily on supposed ‘marketing efficiency measures’, such as reducing spend and optimising media buying, while overlooking the importance of marketing effectiveness.
This had led to short-termism and an over focus on any tactic that was most obviously connected to a sale, rather than looking at the wider picture of how people where engaging with the brand across a longer sales journey.
Adidas’ Global Media Director, Simon Peel, summed up: “We didn’t have any kind of econometric modelling – our attribution modelling was based on last click; we didn’t do brand tracking. So, all of the basics that exist to show you how much you should be spending on marketing didn’t exist.”
Focus on the emotional connection
As a result, Adidas was overspending on ‘performance’ marketing activities, which were responsible for driving only a fraction of its sales across wholesale, retail, and ecommerce.
In fact, Adidas had been spending only 23% of its marketing budgets on brand and emotionally led advertising, compared with 77% on performance advertising. The company had believed that the primary driver of online sales was product performance, and as a result, it had focused its marketing efforts primarily on product features and benefits.
However, Adidas found through greater analysis that brand activity, such as advertising and social media campaigns, played a more significant role in driving eCommerce sales than it had previously thought. A much more significant role in fact. Brand activity was found to be responsible for driving a huge 65% of sales across wholesale, retail, and eCommerce.
To refocus its marketing strategy, Adidas began investing in emotionally-led brand comms that resonated with its target audience, and creating a consistent brand experience across all touchpoints.
Which is where the lessons come in.
At the simplest level, B2B brands need to review and reassess the potential of brand building and emotive comms as a tool to generate connections and drive sales. We know that emotionally-led brand comms that resonates with their target audience is something that is underutilised across the board in B2B, but which when employed correctly can create a more impactful and engaging brand experience that drives customer loyalty and ultimately, revenue.
After all, research from Google and CEB has found that B2B customers are significantly more emotionally connected with their vendors and service providers than consumers. Which makes sense – B2B purchases are usually complex, expensive and risky (thus the ‘nobody ever got fired for buying IBM’ saying).
And there’s no emotional connection more important than one that is focused on providing trust and reassurance when someone is anxious. So emotive marketing can really help B2B brands stand out from the competition.
Attribution where attribution’s due
Adidas also realised it had been focusing too much on last-touch attribution modelling. In Adidas’ case, that meant an overfocus on digital attribution which was leading to over-indexing on perceived ‘conversion’ tactics and channels such as AdWords.
When Adidas switched to econometric modelling it found that it had been investing in all the wrong places. It was in fact higher up the funnel activity as a video (which typically doesn’t do very well in last-touch attribution), and out of home and cinema, as they were the channels actually building connections and driving ecommerce sales.
This is particularly important in the B2B world, where attribution can all too often fall solely (or mainly) with sales teams.
But given that B2B buyers are often 57% – 70% through their buying research before they even contact sales representatives, we know that there are a lot of other marketing activities doing a lot of the heavy lifting that they don’t get the credit for. And if no effort is placed on understand what these activities are and how relatively important they are in the decision-making process, B2B brands are missing out on growth opportunities.
So, it’s important to develop attribution models that can provide an understanding the full buyer journey and which can provide adequate credit to top of funnel tactics that generate the interest and preference that ultimately converts to sales.
Summing up
So, there you go. Even the biggest of brands can make fundamental mistakes in their marketing approaches. But when they get around to sorting it out, the lessons really are invaluable for all marketers, regardless of size or sector.
