Marketing Budgets Shifting From Above to Below-the-Line

 A new study conducted by Winterberry Group indicates that marketing efforts are shifting from above-the-line (ATL) to below-the-line (BTL) efforts. In other words, marketing campaigns are moving away from using mass media branding through the use of generic and broad messages and moving towards utilizing more direct response marketing methods.

According to Winterberry Group data and secondary research, ATL marketing makes use of print, broadcast, and outdoor advertising to reach large audiences that strengthen brands and convey general product information or elicit emotional responses from consumers exposed to the advertisements. On the other hand, BTL marketing uses direct mail, insert media, database marketing, interactive marketing, and promotional marketing to create specifically aimed marketing campaigns that offer consumers the ability to easily respond while allowing marketers to track the success of the efforts with little difficulty.

“Below-the-line initiatives are more successful because they stress targeted and customer-centric communications. Below-the-line also creates measurable results and ROI metrics, which are important to marketers under growing pressure to prove the value of their campaigns,” said Bruce Biegel, managing director of Winterberry Group. “We expect that this demand for quantitative results will continue to intensify for at least the next five years.”

According to Biegel, the rate of the shift from ATL to BTL spending was the most surprising aspect of the findings. Winterberry Group’s study found that since 2003, ATL spending grew an average of 5.5% per year, while BTL spending grew 7.8% per year. BTL spending was led by search, e-mail, and online advertising. The study expects these growth rates to continue through 2007, and that the industry as a whole will grow 6.9% from 2003 to 2007.

The results of the study found two main reasons for this major shift. The first is that consumer attitudes have been changing. Instead of settling for generic, one-sided messages that aim to convey a message to a large, anonymous, and uniform audience, consumers have become more demanding. They insist on responding better to messages that are more engaging and personal, that allow for two-way communication and interaction with the marketer through preferred communication avenues. Advances in technology have allowed marketers to target consumers and track results with more accuracy and efficiency.

This ties into the next factor, which is media fragmentation. As consumers demand more personal and conversational messages, they also demand messages that are made to fit their individual and unique personality and characteristics. The growing diversity of targeted consumers along with the larger options for communication channels makes it difficult for marketers to effectively reach their target audiences. “Every consumer has a different attitude, a different way to reach them. Marketing messages need to be more focused, because the consumer is in control,” Biegel said.

A helpful marketing method that marketers are picking up on is multi-channel marketing. This involves a marketer using more than one communication channel to send the same message to consumers through multiple means. For example, a marketer may send a direct mail drop date with in-statement ads along with an e-mail. This would expose the consumer to the same message but through more than one channel.

The Internet Advertising Bureau has found that using multiple BTL programs together can improve overall sales anywhere from 7% to 34%. A recent study conducted by the Direct Marketing Association discovered that 42% of marketers sell mainly through two channels, while 40% sell through three.

Interactive marketing is no longer seen as a separate element with its own set of rules, but is now being implemented in overall marketing strategies, according to Paul Chachko, founder and CEO of V12 Group. Biegel also indicated that interactive marketing plans no longer constitute a single budget line, but are now separated into individual lines for search, e-mail, lead-generation, and retention activities.

The question then is whether or not consumers come out as winners in all this. Conventional ATL marketing may be less targeted, but it does grant consumers a certain level of general privacy and breathing room, while some may view BTL marketing efforts as downright annoying and a bit too in-your-face. Regardless, it seems that consumers will only see more and more BTL marketing for the foreseeable future, and if they haven’t already, they had better get used to it.

Source:

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