Sales activation

Short-term marketing that converts existing demand into sales now: tightly targeted, rational, measurable within weeks, and decaying just as fast. Essential and efficient, but it cannot grow a brand on its own because it only harvests memories that brand building has already built.

Evidence from the library

Brand building and sales activation work over different timescalesPrinciple The best brand-building campaigns also spike short-term sales, while highly targeted promotional campaigns spike sales but do nothing for the brand.Principle Brand building and sales activation need different mediaPrinciple 50% / 33%Existing-customer campaigns beat new-customer campaigns on short-term activation far more often, which is exactly why activation metrics keep pointing marketers toward the growth-limiting strategy.Warning Price promotions mostly just sell to customers who would have bought anyway, at a lower price, without building any lasting brand memory.Warning

Source

Marketing Definitions

Les Binet and Peter Field, The Long and the Short of It (2013)