Short-term results vs. long-term strategy: ​​Avoid trade-offs with Marketing Mix Modeling

In today's unstable economic climate and ever-changing marketing landscape, brands face a dilemma: to aim for quick, measurable results or to invest in sustainable growth and a solid brand image. Today, this choice guides all marketing decisions.

Should you choose between rapid results and sustainable growth?

Short-term objectives, such as sales, traffic, and leads, are easily measurable and reassure marketing leaders looking for quick returns. On the other hand, building brand image takes time, with more diffuse and less immediate results.

Under budgetary pressure, many companies are choosing to reduce their “top-of-funnel” spending (brand awareness, image) in favor of direct conversion. The risk? Undermining their brand equity, which is essential to sustainable performance.

According to Gartner¹, brand marketing investment as a proportion of total revenues has fallen by over 40% in the five years between 2020 and 2024. Conversion-oriented actions now receive almost twice as much budget as brand awareness, which is perceived as more difficult to justify.

This trend is reinforced by the still widespread perception that brand marketing is only used to generate awareness, its ROI being more difficult to measure than that of performance-based activations. The result: A growing imbalance between what is easily measurable and what builds long-term value.

The vicious cycle of an unbalanced marketing strategy

When a company prioritizes performance at the expense of brand awareness—by spending 80% of its budget on short-term campaigns, for example—it may initially see its acquisition costs fall. But in the absence of investment in brand image, visibility erodes, organic traffic declines... and campaigns have to compensate even more. The result: A steadily rising cost of acquisition and a diminishing return on marketing investment.

What if immediate performance could be reconciled with brand image?

Good news: it's possible to reconcile immediate performance and brand building² thanks to Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM). This econometric method identifies precisely what generates growth, both in the short and long term.

MMM answers the most crucial questions facing today's marketing departments:

• What real long-term impact do our marketing actions have on sales?
• What impact do our marketing actions have on our baseline?
• How does our brand image impact our baseline?
• Which activations create a lasting impact vs. a one-off spike?

By integrating brand image and performance into a common measurement framework, MMM enables marketing departments to reconcile brand image indicators with business results.

3 steps to resolve the dilemma

1/ Give the brand the role it deserves in performance measurement

Investments in brand image are still too often judged solely on awareness metrics. These are useful but insufficient—they fail to capture their concrete impact on business results.

Marketing Mix Modeling goes beyond this partial vision by measuring the delayed and structural effects of brand levers, notably on business baseline, direct traffic, or loyalty.

It quantifies the brand's real contribution, even when the impact is not immediate, and helps marketing teams justify their investments in a sustainable strategy.

2/ Identify your multiplier levers

MMM enables an analysis of the real interactions between the various marketing levers, which are often invisible when viewed in isolation. For example, an increase in brand awareness can mechanically boost the effectiveness of conversion campaigns or stimulate natural traffic.

Certain combinations, such as awareness campaigns combined with more targeted activations, can generate multiplier effects on performance.

Only global modeling can anticipate these cross-effects: How many additional sales can we expect if we gain 2 points in brand awareness? What is the combined impact of TV advertising, SEO, and in-store actions?

3/ Allocate your budgets on the basis of real returns

Once performance has been measured and synergies identified, MMM enables you to reallocate your budgets where they will have the greatest impact, taking into account both short-term dynamics (immediate sales) and long-term dynamics (brand image, loyalty, sustainable profitability).

This enables you to move away from “last-click” management to a strategic trade-off approach: investing where the contribution is truly incremental, even if the effects are not immediate.

The result: Budget decisions that are fairer, more transparent, and better aligned with business objectives.

Trade-offs transformed thanks to MMM

As we partner with a large number of brands, we have observed that Marketing Mix Modeling can transform budget trade-offs by revealing underestimated performance levers, with tangible results such as:

• Branding/performance rebalancing, which enables reallocation of up to 20% of the budget to top-of-funnel channels, whose incremental effect had been underestimated.

• Delayed impact measurement: The ability to demonstrate how brand awareness campaigns fuel organic growth (direct traffic, brand requests, loyalty).

• A consolidated short- and long-term vision: Budgetary decisions take into account both immediate effects on sales and sustainable contributions to the brand.

The result: More balanced management, better aligned with business objectives, and shared between central and local teams.

Conclusion: Steering together is better than choosing one or the other

Branding and performance are complementary, not antagonistic. The real challenge is to steer these levers together, on objective, measurable, and actionable bases.

With MMM, you can:

• Demonstrate the precise value of each lever

• Create synergies between your activations

• Build a strong brand without sacrificing your sales results

Especially since, according to Gartner, customers who are strongly committed to a brand are four times more likely to pay a premium price and have a higher purchase frequency. The ROI of branding is therefore not limited to brand awareness, but to the entire sales dynamic.

Want to explore how MMM can meet your challenges? Book an appointment with our data experts.

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^{1: Gartner, “The CMO’s Guide to Demonstrating the Commercial Impact of Brand Investments”, 2024.
2: To dive deeper into brand equity, download our white paper: "Long-term marketing performance, brand equity: measuring and optimizing to guide your decisions", co-authored with the Marketing Performance Hub Think Tank, which includes Axa, Nestlé, Pernod Ricard and Ekimetrics.}