4 trends from Prolific North Live 2024 that confirm marketers need to think more long-term

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending Prolific North Live in Manchester along with the team. Fresh from a year’s maternity leave, I was keen to hear about what had changed in the marketing landscape and what the latest trends were that I’d missed whilst being knee-deep in bottle-making and nappy-changing.

So, what’s changed? Well, it seems the industry has come right back full circle to recognising the value of marketing theory and brand fundamentals. Hallelujah!

It does feel that for so long we’ve been caught up in channel specific tactics and metrics, with digital marketing siloed from ‘real marketing’, and it’s incredibly refreshing (and validating for our team as a whole) to hear the experts emphasise the value of ‘brand’ and the role of digital marketing channels in the long-term game.

I’ve summarised the key themes I heard from the speakers on the day and the advice they gave to help us digital marketers step back and look at the wider goal.

1. Be consistent

Quite harmoniously, ‘consistency’ was a recurring theme throughout the talks. In my favourite talk, James Bagan at McCann Worldgroup talked about the importance of challenger or underdog brands clearly defining who they are and the principles their brand wants to stick to, and then being consistent in this throughout their entire brand experience.

James shared an interesting snippet from a recent IPA report which showed that the most consistent brands gain market share quicker:

Similarly, Head of Strategy at THG Studios Jo Jeffers said, “Get the message right, and bang on about it.”

Often, brands can try something once and if it doesn’t get the results they were looking for – they might scrap it and try something else. Digital marketing has afforded us the ability to make snap decisions and change the focus of a campaign in real time, which can be super useful in some situations with the right data, but when it comes to the foundation of who your brand is and what perception you want to build, you have to be consistent until this cuts through.

2. Play the long game

If you’re being consistent, you’re likely playing the long game. All too often, challenger brands focus on short-term tactics to try and get ahead of the competition, not understanding the value in building their brand (not that short term tactics can’t also support brand building, of course).

James Bagan touched on the danger of using price promotions, and how “addictive” they can be. It’s a tough one for smaller businesses especially when the rest of the market is offering price promotions at a particular time, you’re likely to be left behind if you’re not. But James recommended trying to focus budget on long-term activity, otherwise you end up in a vicious cycle of needing to generate short-term sales because you’ve become reliant on them, and you end up with no budget left for the longer-term activity, ultimately damaging the growth of your brand.

A part of playing the long game is casting your net wide, which is something that can be tricky to do when you’re working with limited budgets. But as James said, market penetration drives growth, not loyalty. This means focusing on reaching a wider range of consumers, not just concentrating on fewer buying more, it’s ok to chase the “light buyers”.

Before you do this, put some focus into the bottom of the funnel, this is still a part of your long-term brand building activity, but you need to make sure that the audiences you’re driving into your user journey are actually converting.

Carl Hallam, Co-founder of Vega shared a similar view on playing the long game, he said, “short term thinking kills businesses”. He recommended that brands put more focus into their long-term strategy, not getting caught up in trends and vanity metrics.

3. Measure what really matters

Which brings us nicely onto our next point. James Bagan advised that one of the best measures in marketing is market share. You have to be able to understand your growth in context, so how the market is performing for the key categories you operate in and how your performance relates to that.

For example, if you’ve driven 2% online sales growth year-on-year compared to 5% the previous year, but demand in your specific category markets has declined 10%, you’re actually performing better than you were previously.

Working with ambitious businesses; this has long been a key focus for our team in being to define the true opportunity for our client’s business growth and determine the strategy for where their budget is best weighted.

Similarly, Carl Hallam emphasised the high cost of misattributions. Often, different stakeholders can have a laser focus on specific metrics to evaluate success and identify optimum budget distribution, but when the tracking isn’t set up correctly, budget can be focused on the wrong areas.

4. Recognise your strengths as an underdog

As well as the above advice, Jo Jeffers’ talk uncovered the strengths that challenger brands can use to their advantage when trying to gain a piece of the pie in competitive markets. As well as being more agile and having less complex structures which means you can be much quicker off the mark when reacting to a trend or making a decision; being a challenger brand means it’s easier to push boundaries.

Jo’s advice was to be a bit bolder in testing your marketing, as you have the ability to get away with a bit more than the bigger brands can. Similarly, Jamie Axford at MadeBrave emphasised that “creativity is in our control” and you should aim to be the most interesting thing on someone’s feed that day.

In the retail trends panel, Ross Gylanders from Sauce Shop reiterated that marketing fundamentals haven’t changed, but it’s your creativity in using them that will set you apart from the competition.

To that end, Jayne Andrews, Marketing Director at Fentimans suggested that if your paid media budget isn’t as high as your competitors, you should build earned media and ‘talkability’ into every campaign.

One way to do this is through unpredictable partnerships, this was a recommendation from Jo Jeffers, who advised that as well as capturing attention, you can also share the marketing budget, a win-win!

Jo also recommended that if your paid budget is a bit tight, look at ‘boosting’ organic posts, this is a feature in paid social campaigns which allows you to promote your best performing organic posts. It means that you’re putting budget behind posts which you already know are successful at engaging your audience and can help you reach similar, wider audiences.

Looking at the wider goal

There you have it, my four key trends from the event with one consistent message – we all need to think longer term.

Longevity for brands isn’t going to be created from jumping on reactive trends or offering constant price promotions, it’s impossible to plan your marketing budget this way and you end up losing the very core of who you are as a brand and what you stand for.

There is absolutely still room for getting creative with specific channel tactics and the expertise of channel knowledge is invaluable within any marketing strategy, but there has to be a thread tying all channels together, working cohesively towards common goals and a consistent brand identity.

I believe we’re in the most exciting era of marketing yet; where we as digital marketers are moving to a much more strategic and creative approach to what we do. Thank you to all the speakers we saw at Prolific North Live for a really energising and interesting day, can’t wait for the next one!