For brands selling products with long purchase cycles, like mattresses, cars, or appliances, the marketing challenge isn't just winning the sale. It's staying in consumers' minds for years before they're ready to buy.

But the conventional wisdom that consumers buy mattresses every 10 to 12 years doesn't tell the full story, according to Joe McCambley, CMO of Saatva. For Saatva's affluent customer base, typically married homeowners with children, the reality is different.

"Most of our customers have four or five bedrooms,” said McCambley on a recent episode of "Reimagining Retail.” “So when you think of five bedrooms, you're probably buying a new bed every two to three years, not really every 12 years. And a lot of them have two homes. So it's still every two years or so that they're making that purchase."

This insight shaped Saatva's repositioning from luxury brand to sleep brand, fundamentally changing their marketing approach.

"We used to talk about ourselves as the affordable luxury brand, and that was all about the bed. Now we've repositioned ourselves to be the restorative sleep brand. An affordable luxury mattress is something you need every two to 10 years. Restorative sleep is something you need every day."

This repositioning allows Saatva to build what McCambley calls "mental availability" even among audiences not currently in the market, with advertising that subtly reinforces a single message: go to bed.

Measurement beyond immediate sales

For low-frequency purchase categories, traditional performance metrics tell an incomplete story. Saatva tracks multiple indicators that predict future sales:

• Branded search lift appears almost immediately when upper funnel impressions increase
• Share of voice relative to market share predicts growth trajectory
• Nonbranded search performance improves as aided awareness increases
• Direct site visits rise with unaided awareness

"As long as our share of voice is greater than our market share, we're going to see an increase in branded searches, and then we're going to see an increase in market share," McCambley said.

The impact of upper funnel advertising can take six to 12 months to convert to sales, but intermediate metrics provide early signals of effectiveness.

The help-first approach

As consumer discovery shifts toward AI platforms, brands face a new gatekeeper. Where Google search might serve 10 mattress options, AI assistants may recommend only two or three.

"AI will provide you as a recommendation if your business is structurally aligned with what the consumer needs," McCambley said.

Saatva's preparation strategy centers on comprehensive content. The company maintains a blog with approximately 1,500 articles designed to answer every question consumers might have about mattresses, sleep, or sleep health.

"We want to make our blog as convenient as possible for consumers to get answers from it. We want to make our schema, the code underneath the blog, to make it as easy for an AI to get the answers they need as we make it for a consumer," McCambley said.

To appear in AI recommendations, brands must keep their messaging consistent across every touchpoint, from blogs to affiliate partners to TV advertising. The structural changes that optimize for AI also improve the overall organization.

The fundamental principle for staying relevant between purchases: prioritize helping over selling.

"Brands that help sell, and brands that sell don't," McCambley said. "In between purchases, if you can provide help to your audience so that they're constantly coming back to you and seeing that you are their source of help and advice and truth, when it comes time to buy a product, they're going to consider you the same way."

Listen to the full episode

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