(Friday afternoon weekly 1:1 btw CMO and CFO)

(Friday afternoon weekly 1:1 btw CMO and CFO)

CMO: let's do this brand building investment

CFO: will it help us hit our number this month more than what we're already doing?

CMO: no. but we can't measure it that way

CFO: then why do it?

CMO: because we need to build brand

CFO: sure. but how will 'brand building' show up in the "P" section of our P&L?

CMO: it won't happen right away, but i'll happen

CFO: do you have a number we can add to the forecast?

CMO: no

CFO: our revenue comps are already hard enough to hit, I can't approve investment in this kind of unpredictability right now. let's just keep doing what we've been doing

CMO: you mean keep doing direct response performance advertising?

CFO: yes. we get the reports showing we hit a 2.4x ROAS last week and 3x over the last 30 days. That's something that fits into our model

CMO: but our customer acquisition cost has 2x'd since same time last year and the percentage of our new customer revenue coming from paid channels has overtaken every other channel.

CFO: better the devil you know than the devil you don't. we need predictability.

CMO: even if it's eroding the fundamentals of the business?

CFO: clearly eroding fundamentals is not ideal, but if you were in my position, would you do anything differently?

CMO: i get it

CFO: show me what I'm buying with the brand building investment and make sure it clearly ties to business performance, but until then, let's stick to what we've been doing.

*end mtg*

====

raise your hand if you've had a meeting like this.

*me raising hands*

The knock on brand building investments is that measuring the financial impact is impossible.

As a result, investments in 'brand marketing efforts' are the first thing to get cut when cost cutting. Even if everyone in the org agrees on the value of investing in 'the brand' at a theoretical level, when it comes down to pulling dollars out of the DR ad budget that's driving a predictable (albeit eroding) business result that can be seen in the month the cash goes out, it will inevitably be the path of least resistance that gets chosen.

you're probably saying "yes, this is a problem, but I scroll linkedin so I can get the solution to all my problems in a 300 word post"

samesies

so to deliver on that requirement, here's what worked for us:

1. agree that brand is
a) the reason why people buy from us and
b) results in increasing owned and organic acquisition
c) is what drives profits and
d) therefore, is the most important thing we can be investing in

2. get alignment that brand building will not drive revenue immediately, but will drive people to take actions on behalf of the brand (like a branded search that ends up as an engaged session, or follows on social, or any number of digital actions)

3. find the non-revenue short term metrics that drives your business more than any others.

4. tell your brand story in a way that drives that metric
—
Thanks for reading. If this post was helpful, here are 4 things you can do right now to 

• Get more strategic + tactical nuggets on brand building, 

• Tactics on connecting brand building to financial impact, 

• And specific things you can do to build strong emotional connections with your audience: 

1) Subscribe to the Brand Builders podcast on YouTube or Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. 
2) Apply to join our brand builders slack community (suuuuper small group exclusively for brand founders and operators), 
3) Follow Tom and Preston on Linkedin for regular posts on this stuff
4) And heck, share this with someone