In the past decade or so, the development of digital technology and e-commerce has completely changed the marketing ecosystem. From eBay and Amazon, which were the first to embrace e-commerce, to China platforms such as Taobao and Tmall, to PChome, MOMO and Yahoo Kimo in Taiwan, various industries have embraced the e-commerce wave. Brand owners followed closely and gradually increased the proportion of e-commerce. In the end, even physical channel operators had to face the importance of visual revenue.
However, brand owners' marketing challenges go beyond that. Even leaving aside e-commerce, changes in the media ecosystem have made advertising more complex. Take Taiwan television as an example. In the early days, you only needed to advertise on 3 TV stations, but now you have to deal with hundreds of cable channels. In the era of smartphones, the diversification of advertising media and the fragmentation of audiences have doubled the difficulty of marketing placement.
For example, there are now tens of thousands of websites, communities, and various apps, which can be combined into different formats and viewing methods. Compared with advertising 30 years ago, it may be 100 times more complicated. In the past, brands may only need to find a suitable celebrity endorsement to attract consumers, but now they may need to combine the exposure, live broadcast and shopping guide content of dozens of KOLs. to achieve similar effects.
However, the growth rate of marketing budgets in the past and present has been limited, and brands have to deal with this 100 times more complex digital media environment with a similar budget. At the same time, sales channels are tilted from offline to online, making marketing strategies gradually e-commerce, further increasing the pressure on brand owners.
Re-examine marketing budget allocation and balance rational and emotional appeals
The biggest advantage of e-commerce is data transparency and controllability. Through digital tools, brands can track consumer behavior, understand traffic conversion rates, and adjust marketing strategies accordingly. For business owners, because marketing investment can pursue digital results, efficiency can be better controlled.
However, if a brand relies entirely on e-commerce logic, it may also have negative impacts. The reason is that e-commerce platforms are data-centric and focus on how to facilitate order conversion at the lowest cost. But this kind of thinking mainly serves the platform itself, rather than the long-term development of the brand.
By mastering data such as prices, products, and conversion rates, the platform can allocate the best advertising budget to achieve short-term sales goals. However, there is an emotional connection between brands and consumers, which is often overlooked. In addition to rational data support, brands also need to pay attention to perceptual value—whether consumers like your brand. This emotional foundation, whether before or after purchase, is crucial to brand loyalty and long-term development.
In the era of traditional media, brands cannot effectively track advertising effectiveness, so they focus on creating content that touches people's hearts to enhance brand awareness and favorability. However, with digital advertising, brands will begin to pursue data and efficiency, and their efforts on content may gradually decrease.
If marketing is too focused on short-term KPI conversions, the brand may lack a stable source of new customers and can only rely on old customers or promotions to attract new customers. This model cannot support the long-term development of the brand.
Whether before or after purchase, how to make more consumers like your brand is very important. I think brands should re-examine the allocation of advertising budgets and invest some resources into brand building instead of just pursuing instant conversion KPIs.
For example, invest 20% to 40% of the marketing budget in brand building and building brand influence, such as launching high-quality creative advertisements, planning touching brand activities, or deepening the emotional connection between the brand and consumers.
Blind spots in digital advertising tracking: There is a gap between results and real numbers
Don't worry too much about whether such a transfer of advertising budget will have an impact on revenue. My judgment is that the impact will not be as proportional as the transfer. For example, if you transfer a budget of 5 million, the return on investment of the 5 million in digital advertising is 5 (ROAS, return on AD spending, and the proportion of revenue obtained for every 1 yuan invested in advertising), which means that it is possible It will affect revenue of 25 million. But in fact, the revenue figures of Google Analytics are inherently different from the real figures. The effectiveness of digital marketing tracking is actually more about tracking trends rather than absolute numbers, so there is no need to worry so much about the real impact.
In addition, the tracking mechanism of digital advertising inherently has blind spots. For example, some consumers originally planned to purchase goods, but were classified as the results of digital advertising because of the ad triggering. To put that into perspective, these impact numbers may actually translate into lower real revenue. Therefore, even if part of the advertising budget is transferred to brand building, the impact on revenue may be smaller than you think.
As the marketing environment and consumption habits continue to change, brands must focus on long-term development. Old customers are lost every year, so attracting new customers is key to maintaining brand growth. A successful brand needs to find a balance between loss and gain, and win the favor of consumers with perceptual value.
No matter how the digital wave evolves, the core essence of communication between brands and consumers will not change. Brands should incorporate human and emotional elements into digital marketing, so that consumers will be more inclined to choose you among many competing brands. Only by maintaining a balance between branding and digital efficiency in the ever-changing marketing environment can we achieve long-term and steady growth.
