Bonnie C

In 2022, I mentored a local Australian skincare company where the owner personally handled the marketing, using direct marketing strategies. Initially, the results were excellent, but as time went on, the financial performance started to decline. Are you facing a similar issue?  If you’re a brand owner, take a moment to review your marketing process. How much of it relies on direct marketing activities? This might be why your sales are hitting a ceiling! Identifying the issue early and adjusting accordingly isn’t too late.

Here are three key areas to assess:

1. Carefully examine if the proportion of direct marketing in your strategy is too high.

2. Ask yourself if your brand has increased its bargaining power and net profit due to its marketing strategy.

3. Evaluate whether your brand’s market share is growing each year.

Direct marketing includes direct ad placements, email campaigns, SMS notifications, and even discount offers designed for immediate customer response, like making a call, clicking a link, or placing an order. While these tactics can make financial reports look good in the short term, they tend to hit a plateau over time.

If you want your brand to gain higher bargaining power, boost product profitability, or expand market share, you’ll need to rethink your marketing approach. Allocate part of your resources to brand strategy marketing to attract new customers, increase brand awareness, and grow market share. Otherwise, you might soon see your sales numbers stall—or worse, start to decline.

When that time comes, even additional discounts won’t help you break through the “sales ceiling.” Instead, they’ll dilute your brand’s value.