below-the-line-marketing

Below-The-Line Marketing

Business / By /

Below-The-Line Marketing effectively targets audiences through personalized, interactive methods. With components like direct marketing, promotions, and experiential events, it generates engagement and measurable outcomes. However, it challenges resource allocation and precise audience segmentation. Notable examples include product launches and charity events.

Characteristics of Below the Line Marketing:

  • Targeted Approach: BTL marketing is known for its precision in targeting specific audience segments. It aims to reach individuals or groups who are most likely to respond positively to the message or offer.
  • Personalization: A key feature of BTL marketing is its emphasis on tailoring messages and offers for individual recipients. This personalization helps create a more meaningful and relevant connection with the audience.
  • Interactive Experiences: BTL marketing often involves immersive and interactive experiences that go beyond traditional advertising. These experiences can include events, activations, and direct engagement with consumers.
  • Direct Impact: One of the defining characteristics of BTL marketing is its ability to directly influence sales and consumer behavior. It is focused on generating immediate and measurable results.

Components of Below the Line Marketing:

  • Direct Marketing: BTL marketing often includes one-on-one communication with potential customers. This can take the form of personalized emails, direct mail, telemarketing, or targeted digital advertising.
  • Promotions: Short-term incentives, discounts, or special offers are a common component of BTL marketing. These promotions are designed to encourage immediate action, such as making a purchase.
  • Events & Activations: BTL marketing frequently involves hosting events, activations, or experiential marketing campaigns that allow consumers to engage directly with a brand. These experiences can leave a lasting impression.
  • Sponsorships: Brands often gain visibility and connect with their target audience by sponsoring events, sports teams, or charitable initiatives. Sponsorships can be a powerful form of BTL marketing.
  • Public Relations: Managing a brand’s image and reputation through media coverage and strategic communications is an essential component of BTL marketing. Effective PR efforts can shape consumer perceptions.
  • Experiential Marketing: BTL marketing often incorporates experiential marketing strategies that create immersive interactions with consumers. This can include pop-up stores, product demonstrations, or interactive exhibits.

Benefits of Below the Line Marketing:

  • Targeted Reach: BTL marketing allows for precise communication to specific audience segments, increasing the likelihood of reaching individuals interested in the product or service.
  • Engagement: Immersive experiences and personalized messaging foster customer interest and engagement, leading to a deeper connection with the brand.
  • Measurable Results: BTL marketing activities have a direct impact on sales and consumer behavior, making it possible to measure the effectiveness of campaigns and initiatives.

Challenges of Below the Line Marketing:

  1. Resource Intensive: Planning and executing BTL marketing campaigns can be resource-intensive. It requires careful strategy development, event planning, and personalized messaging.
  2. Audience Segmentation: Accurate audience segmentation is crucial for the success of BTL marketing. Identifying and targeting the right audience segments can be challenging but is essential for effectiveness.

Examples of Below the Line Marketing:

  • Product Launch X: A company launching a new product may use BTL marketing by organizing experiential events, product demonstrations, and personalized email campaigns to engage potential customers directly. These events create memorable brand experiences and encourage immediate product purchases.
  • Charity Event Y: A nonprofit organization hosting a charity event can leverage BTL marketing through sponsorships from local businesses. These sponsorships not only provide financial support but also offer visibility and engagement opportunities for the sponsoring brands, which can directly impact their sales and brand image.

Key Highlights of Below-The-Line Marketing:

  • Targeted Engagement: Focuses on specific audience segments for personalized communication.
  • Interactive Experiences: Utilizes immersive events for engaging brand interactions.
  • Direct Impact: Generates measurable influence on sales and customer engagement.
  • Component Diversity: Incorporates direct marketing, promotions, PR, and more.
  • Precise Audience Segmentation: Requires accurate targeting for effective outcomes.
  • Resource Allocation: Can be resource-intensive due to planning and execution demands.
  • Notable Examples: Successful cases include product launches and charity events.
Related FrameworksDescriptionWhen to Apply
Direct Marketing– A marketing strategy that involves reaching out to potential customers directly, usually through targeted communication channels such as email, direct mail, telemarketing, or SMS. Direct Marketing aims to deliver personalized messages or offers to specific individuals or segments to generate immediate responses, leads, or sales.– When seeking to target specific individuals or segments with personalized messages or offers. – Implementing Direct Marketing to drive immediate responses, generate leads, or facilitate sales effectively.
Email Marketing– A digital marketing tactic that involves sending commercial messages or promotional content to a targeted list of email subscribers or contacts. Email Marketing aims to build relationships, nurture leads, or drive conversions through personalized email communications, newsletters, or automated email campaigns.– When aiming to engage subscribers, nurture leads, or promote products through personalized email communications. – Leveraging Email Marketing to deliver targeted messages, drive conversions, and build customer loyalty effectively.
Content Marketing– A strategic marketing approach that focuses on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and engage a target audience. Content Marketing aims to provide useful information, entertain, or educate prospects or customers through various content formats such as blogs, articles, videos, infographics, or social media posts.– When seeking to attract, engage, or retain customers through valuable and relevant content. – Implementing Content Marketing to build brand authority, drive traffic, or generate leads effectively.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)– A digital marketing strategy that involves promoting websites or web pages through paid search engine advertising (e.g., Google Ads) to increase visibility and attract relevant traffic. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) allows advertisers to bid on keywords or phrases related to their products or services and display ads prominently on search engine results pages (SERPs).– When aiming to increase online visibility, drive website traffic, or generate leads through paid search advertising. – Leveraging Search Engine Marketing (SEM) to target potential customers actively searching for relevant products or services effectively.
Social Media Marketing (SMM)– A digital marketing tactic that leverages social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, or YouTube to connect with audiences, build brand awareness, and drive engagement. Social Media Marketing (SMM) involves creating and sharing content, running ads, or engaging with users to achieve marketing objectives.– When seeking to build brand awareness, engage audiences, or drive conversions through social media channels. – Implementing Social Media Marketing (SMM) to reach target audiences, foster relationships, and drive business results effectively.
Event Marketing– A marketing strategy that revolves around hosting, sponsoring, or participating in events such as conferences, trade shows, seminars, webinars, or experiential activations to promote products, services, or brands. Event Marketing allows companies to engage with prospects, customers, or industry professionals in person or virtually and create memorable brand experiences.– When aiming to connect with prospects, customers, or industry professionals through live or virtual events. – Leveraging Event Marketing to showcase products, network with attendees, or generate leads effectively.
Promotional Marketing– A marketing tactic that involves offering incentives, discounts, giveaways, or special deals to encourage immediate action, drive sales, or reward customer loyalty. Promotional Marketing includes strategies such as sales promotions, coupons, contests, loyalty programs, or free samples to attract and retain customers.– When seeking to stimulate demand, drive sales, or incentivize purchases through limited-time offers or special promotions. – Implementing Promotional Marketing to create urgency, boost sales, or build customer loyalty effectively.
Point of Purchase (POP) Marketing– A marketing technique that focuses on influencing purchasing decisions at the point of sale or point of purchase. Point of Purchase (POP) Marketing involves strategic placement of displays, signage, or promotional materials in retail environments to attract attention, showcase products, or encourage impulse purchases.– When aiming to influence buying decisions or drive impulse purchases at the point of sale. – Leveraging Point of Purchase (POP) Marketing to increase product visibility, stimulate sales, or reinforce brand messaging effectively.
Guerrilla Marketing– A marketing strategy that relies on unconventional, low-cost, and high-impact tactics to grab attention, create buzz, or generate viral exposure for a brand, product, or message. Guerrilla Marketing uses creativity, surprise, or novelty to engage audiences in unexpected ways, often in public spaces or through unconventional channels.– When seeking to generate buzz, create memorable experiences, or engage audiences through unconventional marketing tactics. – Implementing Guerrilla Marketing to stand out, spark conversations, or generate word-of-mouth effectively.
Referral Marketing– A marketing approach that encourages existing customers or brand advocates to refer new customers or leads through word-of-mouth recommendations, social sharing, or incentivized programs. Referral Marketing leverages the trust and influence of satisfied customers to acquire new customers and drive growth through referrals.– When aiming to leverage customer loyalty, generate word-of-mouth referrals, or acquire new customers through personal recommendations. – Leveraging Referral Marketing to incentivize referrals, reward advocates, and drive customer acquisition effectively.

Visual Marketing Glossary

Account-Based Marketing

account-based-marketing
Account-based marketing (ABM) is a strategy where the marketing and sales departments come together to create personalized buying experiences for high-value accounts. Account-based marketing is a business-to-business (B2B) approach in which marketing and sales teams work together to target high-value accounts and turn them into customers.

Ad-Ops

ad-ops
Ad Ops – also known as Digital Ad Operations – refers to systems and processes that support digital advertisements’ delivery and management. The concept describes any process that helps a marketing team manage, run, or optimize ad campaigns, making them an integrating part of the business operations.

AARRR Funnel

pirate-metrics
Venture capitalist, Dave McClure, coined the acronym AARRR which is a simplified model that enables to understand what metrics and channels to look at, at each stage for the users’ path toward becoming customers and referrers of a brand.

Affinity Marketing

affinity-marketing
Affinity marketing involves a partnership between two or more businesses to sell more products. Note that this is a mutually beneficial arrangement where one brand can extend its reach and enhance its credibility in association with the other.

Ambush Marketing

ambush-marketing
As the name suggests, ambush marketing raises awareness for brands at events in a covert and unexpected fashion. Ambush marketing takes many forms, one common element, the brand advertising their products or services has not paid for the right to do so. Thus, the business doing the ambushing attempts to capitalize on the efforts made by the business sponsoring the event.

Affiliate Marketing

affiliate-marketing
Affiliate marketing describes the process whereby an affiliate earns a commission for selling the products of another person or company. Here, the affiliate is simply an individual who is motivated to promote a particular product through incentivization. The business whose product is being promoted will gain in terms of sales and marketing from affiliates.

Bullseye Framework

bullseye-framework
The bullseye framework is a simple method that enables you to prioritize the marketing channels that will make your company gain traction. The main logic of the bullseye framework is to find the marketing channels that work and prioritize them.

Brand Building

brand-building
Brand building is the set of activities that help companies to build an identity that can be recognized by its audience. Thus, it works as a mechanism of identification through core values that signal trust and that help build long-term relationships between the brand and its key stakeholders.

Brand Dilution

brand-dilution
According to inbound marketing platform HubSpot, brand dilution occurs “when a company’s brand equity diminishes due to an unsuccessful brand extension, which is a new product the company develops in an industry that they don’t have any market share in.” Brand dilution, therefore, occurs when a brand decreases in value after the company releases a product that does not align with its vision, mission, or skillset. 

Brand Essence Wheel

brand-essence-wheel
The brand essence wheel is a templated approach businesses can use to better understand their brand. The brand essence wheel has obvious implications for external brand strategy. However, it is equally important in simplifying brand strategy for employees without a strong marketing background. Although many variations of the brand essence wheel exist, a comprehensive wheel incorporates information from five categories: attributes, benefits, values, personality, brand essence.

Brand Equity

what-is-brand-equity
The brand equity is the premium that a customer is willing to pay for a product that has all the objective characteristics of existing alternatives, thus, making it different in terms of perception. The premium on seemingly equal products and quality is attributable to its brand equity.

Brand Positioning

brand-positioning
Brand positioning is about creating a mental real estate in the mind of the target market. If successful, brand positioning allows a business to gain a competitive advantage. And it also works as a switching cost in favor of the brand. Consumers recognizing a brand might be less prone to switch to another brand.

Business Storytelling

business-storytelling
Business storytelling is a critical part of developing a business model. Indeed, the way you frame the story of your organization will influence its brand in the long-term. That’s because your brand story is tied to your brand identity, and it enables people to identify with a company.

Content Marketing

content-marketing
Content marketing is one of the most powerful commercial activities which focuses on leveraging content production (text, audio, video, or other formats) to attract a targeted audience. Content marketing focuses on building a strong brand, but also to convert part of that targeted audience into potential customers.

Customer Lifetime Value

customer-lifetime-value
One of the first mentions of customer lifetime value was in the 1988 book Database Marketing: Strategy and Implementation written by Robert Shaw and Merlin Stone. Customer lifetime value (CLV) represents the value of a customer to a company over a period of time. It represents a critical business metric, especially for SaaS or recurring revenue-based businesses.

Customer Segmentation

customer-segmentation
Customer segmentation is a marketing method that divides the customers in sub-groups, that share similar characteristics. Thus, product, marketing and engineering teams can center the strategy from go-to-market to product development and communication around each sub-group. Customer segments can be broken down is several ways, such as demographics, geography, psychographics and more.

Developer Marketing

developer-marketing
Developer marketing encompasses tactics designed to grow awareness and adopt software tools, solutions, and SaaS platforms. Developer marketing has become the standard among software companies with a platform component, where developers can build applications on top of the core software or open software. Therefore, engaging developer communities has become a key element of marketing for many digital businesses.

Digital Marketing Channels

digital-marketing-channels
A digital channel is a marketing channel, part of a distribution strategy, helping an organization to reach its potential customers via electronic means. There are several digital marketing channels, usually divided into organic and paid channels. Some organic channels are SEO, SMO, email marketing. And some paid channels comprise SEM, SMM, and display advertising.

Field Marketing

field-marketing
Field marketing is a general term that encompasses face-to-face marketing activities carried out in the field. These activities may include street promotions, conferences, sales, and various forms of experiential marketing. Field marketing, therefore, refers to any marketing activity that is performed in the field.

Funnel Marketing

funnel-marketing
interaction with a brand until they become a paid customer and beyond. Funnel marketing is modeled after the marketing funnel, a concept that tells the company how it should market to consumers based on their position in the funnel itself. The notion of a customer embarking on a journey when interacting with a brand was first proposed by Elias St. Elmo Lewis in 1898. Funnel marketing typically considers three stages of a non-linear marketing funnel. These are top of the funnel (TOFU), middle of the funnel (MOFU), and bottom of the funnel (BOFU). Particular marketing strategies at each stage are adapted to the level of familiarity the consumer has with a brand.

Go-To-Market Strategy

go-to-market-strategy
A go-to-market strategy represents how companies market their new products to reach target customers in a scalable and repeatable way. It starts with how new products/services get developed to how these organizations target potential customers (via sales and marketing models) to enable their value proposition to be delivered to create a competitive advantage.

Greenwashing

greenwashing
The term “greenwashing” was first coined by environmentalist Jay Westerveld in 1986 at a time when most consumers received their news from television, radio, and print media. Some companies took advantage of limited public access to information by portraying themselves as environmental stewards – even when their actions proved otherwise. Greenwashing is a deceptive marketing practice where a company makes unsubstantiated claims about an environmentally-friendly product or service.

Grassroots Marketing

grassroots-marketing
Grassroots marketing involves a brand creating highly targeted content for a particular niche or audience. When an organization engages in grassroots marketing, it focuses on a small group of people with the hope that its marketing message is shared with a progressively larger audience.

Growth Marketing

growth-marketing
Growth marketing is a process of rapid experimentation, which in a way has to be “scientific” by keeping in mind that it is used by startups to grow, quickly. Thus, the “scientific” here is not meant in the academic sense. Growth marketing is expected to unlock growth, quickly and with an often limited budget.

Guerrilla Marketing

guerrilla-marketing
Guerrilla marketing is an advertising strategy that seeks to utilize low-cost and sometimes unconventional tactics that are high impact. First coined by Jay Conrad Levinson in his 1984 book of the same title, guerrilla marketing works best on existing customers who are familiar with a brand or product and its particular characteristics.

Hunger Marketing

hunger-marketing
Hunger marketing is a marketing strategy focused on manipulating consumer emotions. By bringing products to market with an attractive price point and restricted supply, consumers have a stronger desire to make a purchase.

Integrated Communication

integrated-marketing-communication
Integrated marketing communication (IMC) is an approach used by businesses to coordinate and brand their communication strategies. Integrated marketing communication takes separate marketing functions and combines them into one, interconnected approach with a core brand message that is consistent across various channels. These encompass owned, earned, and paid media. Integrated marketing communication has been used to great effect by companies such as Snapchat, Snickers, and Domino’s.

Inbound Marketing

inbound-marketing
Inbound marketing is a marketing strategy designed to attract customers to a brand with content and experiences that they derive value from. Inbound marketing utilizes blogs, events, SEO, and social media to create brand awareness and attract targeted consumers. By attracting or “drawing in” a targeted audience, inbound marketing differs from outbound marketing which actively pushes a brand onto consumers who may have no interest in what is being offered.

Integrated Marketing

integrated-marketing
Integrated marketing describes the process of delivering consistent and relevant content to a target audience across all marketing channels. It is a cohesive, unified, and immersive marketing strategy that is cost-effective and relies on brand identity and storytelling to amplify the brand to a wider and wider audience.

Marketing Mix

marketing-mix
The marketing mix is a term to describe the multi-faceted approach to a complete and effective marketing plan. Traditionally, this plan included the four Ps of marketing: price, product, promotion, and place. But the exact makeup of a marketing mix has undergone various changes in response to new technologies and ways of thinking. Additions to the four Ps include physical evidence, people, process, and even politics.

Marketing Myopia

marketing-myopia
Marketing myopia is the nearsighted focus on selling goods and services at the expense of consumer needs. Marketing myopia was coined by Harvard Business School professor Theodore Levitt in 1960. Originally, Levitt described the concept in the context of organizations in high-growth industries that become complacent in their belief that such industries never fail.

Marketing Personas

marketing-personas
Marketing personas give businesses a general overview of key segments of their target audience and how these segments interact with their brand. Marketing personas are based on the data of an ideal, fictional customer whose characteristics, needs, and motivations are representative of a broader market segment.

Meme Marketing

meme-marketing
Meme marketing is any marketing strategy that uses memes to promote a brand. The term “meme” itself was popularized by author Richard Dawkins over 50 years later in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. In the book, Dawkins described how ideas evolved and were shared across different cultures. The internet has enabled this exchange to occur at an exponential rate, with the first modern memes emerging in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Microtargeting

microtargeting
Microtargeting is a marketing strategy that utilizes consumer demographic data to identify the interests of a very specific group of individuals. Like most marketing strategies, the goal of microtargeting is to positively influence consumer behavior.

Multi-Channel Marketing

multichannel-marketing
Multichannel marketing executes a marketing strategy across multiple platforms to reach as many consumers as possible. Here, a platform may refer to product packaging, word-of-mouth advertising, mobile apps, email, websites, or promotional events, and all the other channels that can help amplify the brand to reach as many consumers as possible.

Multi-Level Marketing

multilevel-marketing
Multi-level marketing (MLM), otherwise known as network or referral marketing, is a strategy in which businesses sell their products through person-to-person sales. When consumers join MLM programs, they act as distributors. Distributors make money by selling the product directly to other consumers. They earn a small percentage of sales from those that they recruit to do the same – often referred to as their “downline”.

Net Promoter Score

net-promoter-score
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a measure of the ability of a product or service to attract word-of-mouth advertising. NPS is a crucial part of any marketing strategy since attracting and then retaining customers means they are more likely to recommend a business to others.

Neuromarketing

neuromarketing
Neuromarketing information is collected by measuring brain activity related to specific brain functions using sophisticated and expensive technology such as MRI machines. Some businesses also choose to make inferences of neurological responses by analyzing biometric and heart-rate data. Neuromarketing is the domain of large companies with similarly large budgets or subsidies. These include Frito-Lay, Google, and The Weather Channel.

Newsjacking

newsjacking
Newsjacking as a marketing strategy was popularised by David Meerman Scott in his book Newsjacking: How to Inject Your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage. Newsjacking describes the practice of aligning a brand with a current event to generate media attention and increase brand exposure.

Niche Marketing

microniche
A microniche is a subset of potential customers within a niche. In the era of dominating digital super-platforms, identifying a microniche can kick off the strategy of digital businesses to prevent competition against large platforms. As the microniche becomes a niche, then a market, scale becomes an option.

Push vs. Pull Marketing

push-vs-pull-marketing
We can define pull and push marketing from the perspective of the target audience or customers. In push marketing, as the name suggests, you’re promoting a product so that consumers can see it. In a pull strategy, consumers might look for your product or service drawn by its brand.

Real-Time Marketing

real-time-marketing
Real-time marketing is as exactly as it sounds. It involves in-the-moment marketing to customers across any channel based on how that customer is interacting with the brand.

Relationship Marketing

relationship-marketing
Relationship marketing involves businesses and their brands forming long-term relationships with customers. The focus of relationship marketing is to increase customer loyalty and engagement through high-quality products and services. It differs from short-term processes focused solely on customer acquisition and individual sales.

Reverse Marketing

reverse-marketing
Reverse marketing describes any marketing strategy that encourages consumers to seek out a product or company on their own. This approach differs from a traditional marketing strategy where marketers seek out the consumer.

Remarketing

remarketing
Remarketing involves the creation of personalized and targeted ads for consumers who have already visited a company’s website. The process works in this way: as users visit a brand’s website, they are tagged with cookies that follow the users, and as they land on advertising platforms where retargeting is an option (like social media platforms) they get served ads based on their navigation.

Sensory Marketing

sensory-marketing
Sensory marketing describes any marketing campaign designed to appeal to the five human senses of touch, taste, smell, sight, and sound. Technologies such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and the Internet of Things (IoT) are enabling marketers to design fun, interactive, and immersive sensory marketing brand experiences. Long term, businesses must develop sensory marketing campaigns that are relevant and effective in eCommerce.

Services Marketing

services-marketing
Services marketing originated as a separate field of study during the 1980s. Researchers realized that the unique characteristics of services required different marketing strategies to those used in the promotion of physical goods. Services marketing is a specialized branch of marketing that promotes the intangible benefits delivered by a company to create customer value.

Sustainable Marketing

sustainable-marketing-green-marketing
Sustainable marketing describes how a business will invest in social and environmental initiatives as part of its marketing strategy. Also known as green marketing, it is often used to counteract public criticism around wastage, misleading advertising, and poor quality or unsafe products.

Word-of-Mouth Marketing

word-of-mouth-marketing
Word-of-mouth marketing is a marketing strategy skewed toward offering a great experience to existing customers and incentivizing them to share it with other potential customers. That is one of the most effective forms of marketing as it enables a company to gain traction based on existing customers’ referrals. When repeat customers become a key enabler for the brand this is one of the best organic and sustainable growth marketing strategies.

360 Marketing

360-marketing
360 marketing is a marketing campaign that utilizes all available mediums, channels, and consumer touchpoints. 360 marketing requires the business to maintain a consistent presence across multiple online and offline channels. This ensures it does not miss potentially lucrative customer segments. By its very nature, 360 marketing describes any number of different marketing strategies. However, a broad and holistic marketing strategy should incorporate a website, SEO, PPC, email marketing, social media, public relations, in-store relations, and traditional forms of advertising such as television.

Read more:

Read also:

More Resources

Scroll to Top

Discover more from FourWeekMBA

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading

FourWeekMBA