What are Linear and Non-Linear campaigns?

Marketing is a big world and there are many concepts that brilliant minds have studied and implemented. There are ton of ideas that can make or rocket boost a campaign. For those who love marketing strategy, there are certain aspects that elevate weaving of the fabric of business. These approaches or concepts are devised to ensure the base is strong and robust.

Marinoid was built on these foundation stones and all the clients here have been imbedded with this super solider serum. Enough beating around the bush! One of the key approaches to building a brand or develop a winning strategy is the implementing plan. Marketing Plans have to be linear or non-linear period. There is no in between.

What are linear and non-linear campaigns?

Linear marketing

It is a generic approach which is intrusive, direct, time bound. The definition is quite straight forward but you must be wondering what is the ‘time’ aspect here. Does it occur only once? It means that each piece of a linear campaign is repeated regardless of change in other parameters. Usually, these campaigns have a set process that runs throughout the lifecycle of the campaigns. It is not necessarily better or worse than non-linear but the fabric of these campaigns have a marathon objective.

These campaigns generally have a low level of participation from consumers. These campaigns are packaged to suite the audience when are sitting back and getting ads delivered to them. These are generally easy to implement and almost every time run through as planned.

Examples include pop-up ads, boosting blogs or vlogs, trailers, etc.

Non-Linear marketing

This approach is non-intrusive but difficult to implement. These campaigns are more interactive and involve greater attention spam from the visitor. This also means the leads from these campaigns have 2x chances of conversions and a potential to be retained for longer term. The campaigns are more apt for participatory audience. These campaigns demand more time to develop and are heavy on pockets as compared to linear campaigns. This approach can push the lead generation curve during the season when linear campaigns show low ROI.

Examples include online market places, review campaigns, internet advertising, etc.

Now that the definition is clear, it is important to emphasise the fact that these approaches are like opener and runners in cricket. Sometimes, one will get more strike and the other will have only eat up deliveries. Sometimes, it will feel that the other is just a spectator and the other is stealing all the fun. You have to understand that they cannot run without each other and need to rotate strike in tough situations to keep the business growing.

Is there an ideal ratio of linear to non-linear campaigns for a startup?

This is not written in stone but generally when a yearly plan is devised for a startup:

• 0 to 1 year – the ratio of linear to non-linear should be 20:80
• 1 to 2 years onwards – the ratio of linear should increase (not more than 60% )

Feel free to drop your thoughts in the comments below to brainstorm if you feel there is any confusion.