Marketing professionals have to make plenty of effort to attract customers to your brand. You have to either the route of directly or indirectly approaching them. Therefore, you need to have an understanding of upstream vs downstream marketing. The differences will let you explore those insights that can lead to an increase in potential consumers.
4 Differences Between Upstream Vs Downstream Marketing
- Emphasis
- Upstream marketing will focus on activities that can influence customers before the buying stage. It can include conducting market research, identifying the customer needs, etc.
- Downstream marketing involves those activities that you can take once the product is ready for the market. It can include setting up a price, planning promotion and distribution strategies etc.
- Purposes
- Upstream marketing uses the indirect approach to influencing customers. It does not provide an immediate boost in sales but highlights those points through which brands can succeed in the future.
- Downstream marketing takes the direct approaches of targeting the customers. It helps in reaching and satisfying the customers and planing the messaging for future marketing campaigns.
- Measurements
- You can measure the upstream marketing efforts by checking the brand awareness metrics. It can consist of metrics like website impressions and social media followers count.
- By analyzing sales metrics, makes it easier to quantify downstream marketing. You can examine the sales emails and conversions to purchase metrics to evaluate the success rate.
- Communication
- Upstream marketing generally involves communication among the team members of the company. This can comprise talking about product development or dong ing market research etc.
- Downstream marketing aims to communicate with external audiences more often. It can consist of initiating communication with potential customers through advertising, social media and sales efforts.
Wrapping it Up
Remember that you cannot avoid using just one marketing technique by ignoring all other tactics. Besides that, strike a balance by determining the importance of upstream vs downstream marketing. By doing so, each of these approaches will help your brand to effectively meet customer needs and achieve business objectives.
