Stop chasing clicks

This week's guest put Binet and Field's research into practice. Aaron Pelander is Chief Brand Officer at GOVX, the online retailer for the military, first responder, and government community. He walks us through how GOVX rebuilt its marketing budget around reach instead of retargeting, and what it took to get his CFO on board.

—Elena

GOVX’s marketing budget uses a 60/40 split between brand and activation.

Once an all-performance budget stopped growing the business, Aaron tried Les Binet and Peter Field's 60/40 recommendation. Since the shift, GOVX's share of search against a top competitor has dramatically improved.

 

Less Targeting. More Growth.

Why did GOVX's marketing hit a wall?

For years, GOVX ran almost entirely on performance marketing. The team leaned on Facebook and Google ads, tightly targeted at existing members and judged inside a seven-day window. It worked, until it didn't. By 2022, pouring more money into retargeting people who already knew the brand stopped producing new growth. Aaron says the team was "spending too much focus on targeting our existing members."

 

What changed?

Aaron read The Long and the Short of It, Binet and Field's IPA analysis of nearly 1,000 campaigns. He wishes he'd found it ten years earlier, but the timing lined up with GOVX's plateau. He split the team in two: member marketing, aimed at the sliver of GOVX's nearly 13 million members ready to buy now, and brand marketing, aimed at everyone else. Member gets 40% of the budget. Brand gets 60%.

 

How does GOVX measure something as fuzzy as brand building?

Aaron tracks direct and organic search traffic landing on GOVX's homepage, plus new direct member sign-ups and share of search against competitors, an idea borrowed from Binet's research. There's a business payoff too. Sales conversations with brands who want to sell on GOVX get easier once a prospect has already seen the commercials.

 

What's Aaron's contrarian take?

Precise attribution is overrated. A single order probably traces back to 15 different things that happened, not one clickable moment. He'd rather keep the budget moving than chase an attribution model that's exactly right.

 

Listen in on our discussion.

 

"The Long and the Short of It" 

This is the IPA report that changed how Aaron runs marketing at GOVX. Les Binet and Peter Field analyzed nearly 1,000 campaigns and found that short-term and long-term marketing effects work in fundamentally different ways, building the case for a roughly 60/40 split toward brand building. 

Read the article.

 

No ad stands alone 

 “Every advertisement, every radio program, every TV commercial is not a one-time shot, but a long-term investment in the total personality of their brands.” 

— David Ogilvy, Confessions of an Advertising Man 

This newsletter comes from the hosts of The Marketing Architects, a research-first show answering your biggest marketing questions. Find us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.