Marketing minds like to break everything into different categories. While Economist are known for the phrase “on the other hand,” marketing people use “can be segmented into.” In hopes of segmenting the tools that marketing professionals use, the industry has dreamed up two new acronyms: ATL and BTL.
In a post on CREATIVE BAZAAR, Serge Zuev gives a basic explanation of the difference.
Basically marketers separate all the marketing efforts into 2 categories: (ATL) above the line and BTL (below the line).
ATL – all conventional marketing weapons like mass media brandwashing (tv spots, magazine ads, etc). It is not very targeted, extremely expansive and get less and less efficient nowadays. If you have TiVo and unsubscribe from the magazine because they cannot offer you anything you cannot find on the net – you get the idea.
BTL – is the rest of marketing actions, usually much less expensive, very targeted and easily monitored. Direct mail, insert media, interactive, guerilla marketing etc. “Below-the-line creates measurable results and ROI metrics, which are important to marketers under growing pressure to prove the value of their campaigns” said Bruce Biegel, managing director of Winterberry Group.
I like the explanation. The tools listed in the BTL section don’t ever seam to be considered as sexy or cool as those in the ATL sections, however the BTL tools offer more tailored and customer forced marketing. I have always recommended the BTL marketing tools, even before I knew of the classification, to all of my clients or friends. Some companies have the money to drop a nuke on their clients (ATL Marketing), but most business can only afford to hire a sharpshooter (BTL Marketing). Given the two choices, I would rather spend the money on an army of sharpshooters (BTL Marketing) that know how to make every shot count.
