Upstream vs. Downstream Marketing: Key Differences

Think of your marketing plan as a river, and your customers as fish. Downstream marketing techniques are the easy wins you can catch by being in the right place at the right time. Upstream marketing involves going to the river’s source and figuring out how to drive more fish to your location.

Both these short-term and long-term approaches to marketing are effective ways to connect with customers, but they produce different results. A good marketing plan integrates both upstream and downstream marketing strategies.

Learn more about the key differences between upstream marketing versus downstream marketing, and how both types of marketing can help you make sales.

What is upstream marketing?

Upstream marketing is a marketing strategy focused on understanding and influencing the desires of the consumer over time. Rather than generating immediate sales, upstream marketing strategies aim to build relationships and identify future markets.

Upstream marketing aims to do the following:

Identify unmet customer needs

Market research can help your team learn about consumer desires and needs. This might also spark new product ideas, or ideas for how to improve your current offerings.

Mike Alfaro originally developed Millennial Lotería to refresh the centuries-old Latin American game for a new audience with cards like La Selfie replacing La Sirena. After the game’s initial success, Mike decided to expand with a Gen Z edition. Market research led him to include cards like El Minecraft (Gen Z makes up 41% of the game’s user base).

Shape the market

Effective upstream marketing creates demand for your product and nurtures long-lasting relationships with your audience. You might try publishing content to social media channels, for example, to demonstrate the value of your product.

The beauty brand Dieux does a good job at explaining how its products can help customers. In an Instagram post in the middle of the summer, it shared a carousel about how to treat sunburn with its Deliverance product.

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A post shared by Dieux ™ (@dieuxskin)

By positioning its product as an unexpected solution to sunburn, it’s shaping how audiences see the brand’s offerings.

By posting about sun damage on a regular basis, Dieux continues to reinforce the idea that their treatments should be everyone’s go-to. Plus, that consistency in positioning prepares audiences for an upcoming product: a Dieux sunscreen.

Reach your target audience

Looking upstream can reveal information about your audience’s preferences and demographics, which can guide your marketing messaging. You can look at market research to understand the industry as a whole.

With your Shopify store, you have access to a detailed analytics and reporting dashboard. You can get details like where your customers live, how their behaviors have changed over time, and who is loyal to your brand. Having a clear idea of who you’re talking to ensures your brand’s product positioning reaches and resonates with your target audience.

What is downstream marketing?

Downstream marketing strategies focus on short-term sales. This includes using sales tactics such as advertising, email marketing, and product promotion to sell products to consumers who are ready to buy.

Downstream marketing efforts are typically:

Focused on revenue generation

Downstream marketing emphasizes driving the sales you need in the near term to keep your business running. For example, when Genna Tatu started her crochet business, Crochet by Genna, she ran ads on Etsy to make her first sales and build up her reputation.

“Once you get your first initial sales, that’s how you start building your shop’s reputation,” she says. “That’s how you start drawing customers in because they’ll look at your Etsy and say, ‘Oh, Genna has zero sales. I’m not buying from her.’ You really need to prioritize getting those first few sales. Then, once you start getting those first few sales, you also get those first few reviews. You build credibility, and then people will come back to you.”

With ads, Genna saw immediate and measurable results. She later turned to upstream marketing techniques like creating content on Instagram and YouTube to connect with her audience on a deeper level.

Easy to execute

You can execute downstream marketing tactics such as sales emails and flash promotions quickly and generate immediate returns—especially when using digital marketing channels.

For example, email marketing tools like Shopify Email allow you to automate downstream marketing activities like sending abandoned cart emails.

More targeted

Since the main focus is sales, downstream marketing campaigns have a more defined target audience than upstream marketing tactics. In other words, downstream marketing doesn’t cast as wide a net as upstream marketing.

For example, a downstream campaign might focus on incentivizing loyal customers by offering a discount if they spend $100, whereas an upstream campaign will try to pique the interest of both customers and non-customers.

By looking at the data, sales and marketing teams can target the groups that are most likely to make a purchase and use strategies like upselling to boost average order value (AOV).

Key differences between upstream vs. downstream marketing

• Activities
• Customer journey point
• Goals
• Measures of success

While upstream and downstream marketing both appeal to customers, they do so in different ways. Here’s how upstream and downstream marketing differ:

Activities

Upstream marketing is a more long-term approach than downstream marketing. Tactics like ebooks, blogs, customer interviews, market research, demos, and interacting on social media connect you to your audiences at a slower pace.

Downstream marketing yields quicker results with tactics like running promotions, retargeting ads, and social media ads.

Customer journey point

Marketers employ upstream and downstream marketing tactics at different points in the marketing stream. Upstream marketing occurs at the top of the marketing funnel, focusing on targeting consumers well before they’re ready to buy, such as in the awareness stage when they’re first learning about a product.

Downstream marketing activities come into play later in the customer journey, typically when they are considering a purchase.

Goals

Upstream marketing processes such as trend forecasting won’t immediately generate sales, but they can give your sales and marketing managers information that helps them succeed in the future. Understanding your target audience can help you plan the messaging for future marketing campaigns. Similarly, informational content might not immediately persuade a potential customer to make a purchase, but it can mark the beginning of building a relationship with them in which they see you as a trustworthy source.

Downstream marketing, on the other hand, focuses on making sales in the moment. It’s less about establishing a connection and more about giving customers a reason to check out, such as incentivizing them with a discount code or a limited-time offer of a free item with a purchase.

Measures of success

Upstream marketing can be difficult to quantify because of the long-term nature and data that doesn’t paint a full picture. You can measure upstream marketing efforts through brand awareness metrics like website impressions or social media engagement.

Downstream marketing tactics, such as sales emails, are easier to quantify because you can measure their success via sales metrics such as conversions to purchase, which can inform what tactics are successful.

Using upstream and downstream marketing together

Upstream and downstream marketing share a common goal: connecting with customers. But they have different strengths, which is why businesses often use these strategies simultaneously.

Skin care and wellness brand CAP Beauty’s homepage uses both upstream and downstream marketing strategies. In its top navigation menu, there is a link to its blog, The Thinking Cap. Blogging is a more long-term approach to connecting to customers. It typically includes using search engine optimization (SEO) tactics to get your content to show up in relevant web searches. In the bottom left corner, the brand incentivizes visitors to make a purchase in the moment by offering a discount for those who sign up for emails and texts.

Upstream and downstream marketing help businesses capture more people along the marketing funnel—from people who are in the beginning stages of learning about a product to those who are ready to make a purchase.

Both marketing processes require a firm understanding of your customer base because the messaging and approaches will differ. Executing these strategies in collaboration with sales, marketing, analytics, and design teams can lead to more success, as this will give you a fuller picture of your customers and what they respond to most.