Webinar: How much performance marketing is good for your business? Nike case study.

This webinar was conducted on 11 September 2024 here -   / comments  

Nike has learnt the hard way that even great performance marketing doesn’t make a solid business. It all started in 2020, when the new Nike CEO stepped in and announced, among other things:
Nike will become a DTC led company, ending the wholesale leadership.
Nike will change its marketing model, centralizing it and making it data driven and digitally led.

Basically, Nike decided to focus on performance marketing as the primary method of driving sales. For the first time in its history, Nike was going to give up its distribution channels, wholesalers, and several other partnerships. This worked very well while the pandemic and post-pandemic digital madness was high. But come 2023, people’s consumption patterns started skewing back to the physical world. With Nike’s partner ties severed, other brands took up shelf space in retail stores and dug into the market share. It’s 2024, and Nike’s stock is down more than 20%.

According to a survey by MMA India and Publicis Commerce, 80% of direct-to-consumer (D2C) businesses in India are not yet profitable, with 63% being completely unprofitable. For B2B product and service companies who sell online or look for leads online, this is an important data point to note. Whether you’re selling a payment gateway or logo making services, brand building has to go hand in hand with performance marketing, if you want to make actual money.