Direct-Indirect Marketing Portfolio
Balance attributable growth with differentiated long-term demand.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 99%
Divide marketing into direct activities whose actions can be attributed to revenue and indirect activities that influence revenue through awareness, emotion, belief, consideration, and differentiation. Direct work provides accountability and short-term growth, but optimizing only what instrumentation can attribute encourages incremental tactics already used by competitors. It may also subordinate customer needs to the measurement system. Indirect work helps a business stand out and build durable preference, although its contribution cannot be expressed as a clean dollar-for-dollar return. The model therefore calls for a balanced portfolio rather than choosing one side. Establish the measurable demand foundation, then deliberately fund harder-to-attribute work that changes how customers feel and think. As cookies disappear and privacy limits attribution, interpret direct measurements as directional evidence rather than an absolute map of causation.
Origin
Extracted from Marketing Against The Grain
Core principles
- 01Direct activities connect clearly to revenue.
- 02Indirect activities create awareness, emotion, belief, and differentiation.
- 03Direct-response optimization tends to become incremental.
- 04Instrumentation should inform strategy rather than dictate it.
- 05Privacy changes make even direct attribution directional.
- 06Durable businesses need both short- and long-term marketing.
How to run it
- 1
Classify the Portfolio
List current marketing activities and separate those directly attributable to revenue from those that influence revenue indirectly.
Pro tip Classify by causal visibility, not by whether any metric exists.
Watch out Indirect does not mean unmeasurable or unaccountable.
- 2
Secure the Foundation
Confirm that the business has a functioning path for generating demand, leads, sign-ups, or sales. Repair foundational gaps before shifting excessive resources elsewhere.
Pro tip Use direct activity to establish early credibility and operating evidence.
Watch out Brand investment cannot compensate for a missing acquisition mechanism.
- 3
Diagnose Incrementalism
Review whether measurable tactics merely optimize small variables or copy competitors. Identify customer needs and differentiating opportunities that attribution reports overlook.
Pro tip Ask what the team would pursue if perfect attribution were impossible.
Watch out Do not let the measurement system become the strategy.
- 4
Fund Indirect Effects
Invest in work designed to create awareness, emotion, influence, belief, and differentiated market position.
Pro tip State the intended customer change before choosing an activity.
Watch out A vague collection of brand activities is not a strategy.
- 5
Balance Time Horizons
Maintain direct investments for current demand while giving indirect investments enough time to compound. Review the combined portfolio against both near-term and durable growth.
Pro tip Use separate expectations for short-term response and long-term preference.
Watch out Judging long-term work by immediate revenue can terminate it before effects appear.
- 6
Interpret Attribution Cautiously
Treat direct attribution as useful directional evidence under privacy and tracking constraints. Avoid presenting modeled causation as an absolute fact.
Pro tip Triangulate attribution with customer research and aggregate trends.
Watch out False precision can make an imbalanced strategy look rational.
In the wild
A software company maintains its measurable lead-generation engine but allocates part of its budget to distinctive educational media intended to improve awareness and consideration. It evaluates each side according to its own causal horizon rather than demanding immediate dollar-for-dollar attribution from both.
→ The company preserves near-term pipeline while developing differentiated long-term demand.
A marketing team sees cookie restrictions weakening campaign-level attribution. Instead of limiting investment to the shrinking set of trackable actions, it treats attribution as directional and combines it with brand surveys and customer evidence.
→ The team avoids allowing incomplete instrumentation to narrow its entire strategy.
Common mistakes
Optimizing Only What Is Attributable
This creates incremental tactics, weak differentiation, and dependence on increasingly incomplete instrumentation.
Treating Indirect as Activity Without Outcomes
Indirect marketing still needs an intended customer change and evidence of meaningful progress.
Abandoning Direct Foundations
A company without a functioning demand engine should not use long-term brand work to avoid fixing basic acquisition problems.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for marketing leaders balancing immediate revenue accountability with durable brand and category growth.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal for a company that has not yet established a basic acquisition path or validated demand-generation foundation.
From the transcript
“You can break all of marketing into direct monetization.”
“Because it forces you to be really incremental. It allows you to not differentiate against your competition.”
“You want to do, you got to do both.”
From the episode
The Future of Marketing, Disruptive Business Models, Growing in Unfair Ways