Marketing teams are under mounting pressure to deliver results on shrinking budgets, as economic uncertainty continues to put budgets under scrutiny.
So, how can marketers prove the value of spending, especially on brand building, when leadership wants fast, low-cost wins?
In the latest edition of Marketing Week’s webinar series The Lowdown, editor-in-chief Russell Parsons was joined by Jo McClintock, vice-president of brand and marketing at Trainline, Matt Knight, commercial director of Laithwaites Wine and Dan Roche, CMO of Workbooks CRM, to discuss how marketers can unlock more investment in brand.
Here are some of the key takeaways.
1. Be hypothesis-led
McClintock detailed how Trainline has adopted a test-and-learn model, allocating 70% of its marketing budget to tried and tested channels and 30% to hypothesis-driven experiments
“We would set out hypotheses in each market on what we believe was going to deliver the results that we were seeking and then ultimately, as we learned more through that hypothesis-led testing, we would then build the playbook,” she said.
This approach spans both brand and performance marketing. Over time, Trainline evaluates short, medium and long-term effects and return on ad spend (ROAS), adjusting the portfolio accordingly to experiment with ideas while unlocking spend.
One successful test focused on customer passions, specifically football. The company hypothesised sponsoring Spanish team Real Betis Balompié would incrementally lift awareness by 10 points compared to the national average. It worked and Trainline has since scaled the strategy into France with its sponsorship of Olympique Lyonnais.
2. Marry brand and performance
Roche at Workbooks echoed the need for hypothesis-led thinking, noting that his team was facing structural and awareness challenges in a saturated CRM market.
“There are thousands of CRM providers, but most people can only name two,” he says. “We weren’t even known in the UK. Buyers were not clear about what they could achieve from CRM and then we didn’t have any brand recognition.”
Initially reliant on bottom-of-the-funnel performance campaigns, Workbooks decided to reallocate a portion of that budget to brand marketing, without asking for additional investment.
He gave the example of how, after running the brand campaign, the response to Workbooks’ performance marketing channels, like emails, improved significantly.
That uptick gave Roche the evidence he needed to push for broader brand investment across the business.
“We could say: ‘This is making a difference. We should invest more in the brand in other areas, because that impacts on everything else,’” he explains.
3. Pick the right metrics
While marketing budgets remain under pressure, proving the value of brand investment continues to challenge even the most data-savvy marketers, especially when the returns aren’t immediately visible on a spreadsheet.
For Laithwaites, securing marketing spend isn’t the problem, it’s justifying brand investment in terms the business understands.
“It’s trying to shift the perception within a business of how you can measure brand investment in a similar way to your direct investment. It’s just making sure you’re set up in the right way to do so,” he said.
To demonstrate the impact of investment, Knight and his team track the impact of brand activity across several areas: sales growth, increases in average order value (AOV), product pricing and the sustainability of these effects over time.
“It’s about not only demonstrating at the time, but continuing to come back and show that we are continuing to make an impact on all these metrics,” he explained.
You have to stop trying to explain brand in vague terms and start bringing evidence to the table.
Jo McClintock, Trainline
He emphasised Laithwaites focuses on metrics that go beyond clicks and likes – such as consideration and awareness – because the team has shown through research these shifts directly lead to more sales.
“We’re not chasing clicks or likes. We’re growing customer consideration, which has real value. That’s the terms we use to narrow it down,” Knight added.
Meanwhile, Roche explained B2B marketers are often seen as an extension of sales, who may view marketing as a service function rather than a driver of revenue.
“There is a bit of disconnect,” he said. “In B2B, marketing can often be seen as a support or a service function to the sales team. So to counteract that, marketing leaders can do more to suggest and propose analysis that actually shows how marketing is performing.”
By creating clear links between brand investment and performance outcomes, Roche believes marketing leaders can reshape their internal narrative and gain the backing they need.
4. Language matters
A recurring theme across the panel was the need to speak the language of the boardroom, especially when CFOs are involved. The term “brand building” doesn’t always resonate, Knight admitted, which is why he’s started to reframe it more simply.
“You advertise so people hear about your product. If you stop, they won’t buy it. That’s advertising, but it’s now become ‘brand’ – but that doesn’t necessarily resonate to those people who are thinking very clearly in terms of ROI, and money and money out,” he explained.
McClintock agreed, stressing that strong relationships at the board level are crucial to having “open and honest” conversations.
“You have to stop trying to explain brand in vague terms and start bringing evidence to the table,” she said.
Noting it can be rare within B2B to invest in brand, Roche has seen unexpected benefits to brand building as employees started recognising themselves in the messaging, which built morale.
“Through some osmosis, or more directly, that feeds into the CFO, the board and the company in general, so people feel better about the organisation,” he added.
The next episode of The Lowdown will take place on 28 May at 11am.
