The Digital Landscape is Changing Fast

For more than a decade, marketing has revolved around the creation of single-execution periodic campaigns:

• Come up with the big idea
• Produce creative concept 
• Execute for 90-180 days
• Analyse the results

But in today's fast-paced digital landscape, this traditional approach is falling short.
Periodic marketing campaigns are failing to meet the evolving needs of consumers; who want fast, authentic and valuable content (not ads), and marketers; who are under pressure to do more with less and maximise marketing return on investment (ROI).

Traditional Models Can’t Keep Up

Senior marketing decision-makers are being challenged to achieve more with limited resources, grappling with the need to maintain relevance and visibility in an increasingly competitive environment—all while facing constraints on time, budget, and headcount.

At the same time, the way people consume content is changing. 

Tiktok has revolutionised the advertising landscape and enterprise organisations are lagging behind as consumers demand fast-paced, high-value content that is both useful and entertaining.

The very nature of what constitutes an Ad is changing and the traditional ‘plan once’ and ‘set and forget’ model of marketing is all but obsolete.

Where Are Periodic Campaigns Falling Short?

Periodic campaigns have 3 big limitations:

1. High Upfront Cost - Traditional campaigns require substantial upfront investment. All assets and content are typically planned and produced months in advance leaving little-to-no flexibility for creation of new content once live.
2. Limited Learning - Each campaign is executed only once before being replaced. Campaign creative is retired when the campaign ends, limiting the transfer of any learnings to future campaigns.
3. Inflexible Execution - Organised around a core theme or idea, periodic campaigns often take months to prepare and the ‘set and forget’ style of execution leaves little room to pivot or adjust based on performance.

If you are still running periodic campaigns, you are missing out on the chance to capitalise on emerging trends and make the kind of in-flight optimisations that increase.

Always-On Marketing: A Paradigm Shift

Always-On Marketing represents a shift from sporadic, single-execution campaigns to a continuous, integrated approach. It involves establishing a baseline of ongoing activity across a set of key channels, centred around your core products or services. 

Additional seasonal campaigns are then layered on top at strategic points throughout the year to drive or capitalise on peaks in demand.

Here are 7 reasons why you need to make the switch:

1. Stay Front of Mind: If you’re constantly switching campaigns off you’re missing out on in-market prospects who might be searching for your product or service. Remaining omnipresent ensures you maintain a market presence so you’re the first brand your prospects think of when it comes to making a purchase decision.
2. Start Small & Scale Up: Unlike traditional campaigns which require significant upfront investment, Always-On Marketing allows you to start with a small pilot investment and gradually scale up campaigns based on performance and insights.This allows you to test content, refine your strategy, and invest confidently in what works.
3. Continuously Improve: Always-on campaigns allow you to leverage data and insights to drive incremental improvements in performance and all learnings are carried forward. Over time those small marginal gains compound into big performance improvements giving you a significant edge over the competition.
4. Maximise Marketing ROI: By continuously optimising campaigns, you can enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of your marketing spend. Make iterative improvements to ad creative, refine your targeting, and re-weight budget toward the best performing channels in your integrated mix to maximise ROI.
5. Produce Better Content: Always-on marketing gives you far greater agility and flexibility when it comes to content creation. You can introduce and test new content as you go to take advantage of trending mechanics, participate in topical conversations, and produce the kind of relevant, authentic and timely content that your prospects are looking for.
6. Build Future Pipeline: A consistent always-on presence means you can capture prospects all year-round. Offer multiple conversion points to capture prospects at different stages in the buying cycle and use email nurture sequences to deepen desire, preference and trust over time. This is a highly effective way to reduce acquisition costs, drive repeat sales and increase Customer Lifetime Value (CLV).
7. Understand Seasonality: Running campaigns for a full 12 months means you can start to spot seasonal trends and changes in consumer behaviour. Use these insights to your advantage. Scale up budgets and create targeted thematic campaigns around key events in the calendar year to drive additional leads, sales and revenue.

Need Another Reason to Switch to Always-On Marketing?

• We helped UK Private Bank, Brown Shipley, drive an 8X year-on-year increase in lead generation by switching to an Always-on Model. 
• Using an an integrated mix of Paid Search, Paid Social and Email Marketing, making iterative improvements over a 12 month period, we generated:
• 1,000+ high net worth leads
• A pipeline of £40M+ in Assets Under Management (AUM)
• 8X Return on Marketing Spend
• Best-ever lead generation campaign

Read the full case study here

The big takeaway:

Consumer content consumption cycles are getting faster and marketing resources are being squeezed. You need to increase the performance of your campaigns and generate a greater return on marketing investment.

The answer is to switch to an always-on model of execution.

Only by moving to a model of consistent testing, learning and iteration can realise the full potential of your marketing campaigns - making small, data-backed adjustments that add up to significant improvements in long-term performance.

Ready to Make the Leap to Always-On?

Making the transition from periodic campaigns to an always-on model of executing can be a daunting task. It requires careful planning and execution to understand what’s working, what’s not. We can help.