By: Olivia Bolton. Works with 111 Creatives, a branding and marketing agency, where she supports projects that help brands and businesses execute their vision with clarity and impact.

Most marketing teams measure campaign success by immediate metrics: impressions delivered, clicks generated, conversions tracked. But this quarterly mindset obscures a more expensive reality hidden in spreadsheet blind spots.

The true cost of one-off campaigns isn’t the invoice you pay. It’s the institutional knowledge you lose, the relationships you abandon, and the compounding growth you sacrifice every time you start from zero.

Pablo Gerboles Parrilla learned this lesson not in a boardroom, but on a golf course. As a Division I athlete who later turned professional, he understood that performance isn’t built through sporadic intensity. It’s built through consistent, deliberate practice that compounds over time.

“In golf, you can’t show up once a month and expect to compete,” says Gerboles Parrilla, who now applies that same philosophy to the marketing strategies he develops through his ventures. “The players who win are the ones who show up every single day, refining their approach, learning the course, building muscle memory. Marketing works the same way.”

The Hidden Acquisition Costs Nobody Calculates

When companies evaluate campaign costs, they typically account for creative development, media buying, and performance tracking. What they don’t account for is the hidden acquisition cost embedded in every new partnership.

Each time you work with a new agency, influencer, or marketing partner, you’re essentially paying an invisible tax. There’s the time spent explaining your brand positioning, educating them about your target audience, clarifying what hasn’t worked in the past, and negotiating terms. This institutional transfer takes weeks or months and occurs entirely off the invoice.

Then there’s the learning curve. No matter how experienced the partner, they need time to understand what resonates with your specific audience. Their first campaign is rarely their best work with your brand; it’s a calibration exercise.

“We see companies spend six figures on a campaign, get mediocre results, and then move to a different partner hoping for better outcomes,” Gerboles Parrilla notes. “But they’re just paying the same onboarding tax again with someone new. Meanwhile, their competitor, which stuck with one strategic partner, is three iterations ahead, with campaigns that perform better because the partner actually understands the brand deeply.”

The Compounding Returns of Institutional Knowledge

Long-term partnerships create something one-off campaigns never can: institutional knowledge that compounds.

When Pablo Gerboles Parrilla transitioned from professional athletics into building multiple eight-figure technology companies, he carried forward one critical insight: meaningful results come from systems that improve incrementally, not tactics that reset constantly.

A marketing partner who’s worked with your brand for two years knows which messaging angles resonate, which audience segments convert, which creative styles underperform, and which timing strategies maximize engagement. This knowledge is not included in any deliverable document. It exists in their instinctive understanding of your brand.

More importantly, they’ve seen what didn’t work. In one-off campaigns, failed experiments disappear into the void. In long-term partnerships, they become data points that inform smarter future decisions.

“The most valuable thing we provide clients isn’t the first campaign,” Gerboles Parrilla explains. “It’s the tenth campaign, when we’ve eliminated everything that doesn’t work, and we’re operating from proven knowledge rather than educated guesses.”

Breaking Down the Real Numbers

Consider two scenarios over an 18-month period:

Scenario One: Quarterly One-Off Campaigns 

You run six separate campaigns with six different partners. Each requires briefing, creative development, execution, and analysis. You’re paying for redundant onboarding, repeated learning curves, and strategies that never benefit from iteration. The partners are incentivized to deliver immediate results rather than sustainable growth.

Scenario Two: Single Long-Term Partnership 

You commit to a single partner for 18 months, with consistent engagement. The first campaign establishes baselines. The second refines based on learnings. By the third campaign, performance improves as the partner better understands your audience. By the sixth, they’re operating with institutional knowledge that would take a new partner months to develop.

The difference in cost-per-acquisition over time can be significant, often showing considerable improvement in the partnership model due to accumulated knowledge and optimized execution.

“People think switching partners saves money because you can negotiate each time,” says Gerboles Parrilla, whose strategic partnerships emphasize long-term value creation. “But you’re negotiating from zero each time. You lose all the efficiency gains that come from a partner who’s already climbed the learning curve.”

The Psychology of Commitment and Performance

There’s a psychological dimension to partnership models that financial analysis often misses. When marketing partners know they’re working on a one-off campaign, their incentive structure focuses on short-term metrics that make them look good for that single engagement.

When they know the relationship continues beyond the current campaign, their incentive shifts toward sustainable strategies that build long-term brand equity, even if it means sacrificing some immediate performance metrics.

This mirrors Gerboles Parrilla’s broader business philosophy: “stay small long enough to become big enough.” Rather than chasing rapid scale through aggressive tactics, he advocates for building strong foundations that support sustainable growth.

“In my meditation practice, I constantly return to the same question: Am I making this decision from peace or from pressure?” he reflects. “The same applies to marketing partnerships. Are you switching partners because the data clearly shows it’s the right move, or because you’re feeling pressure to show immediate results? Decisions made under pressure rarely create lasting value.”

When One-Off Campaigns Actually Make Sense

To be clear, long-term partnerships aren’t always the right answer. One-off campaigns have their place in specific scenarios:

When you’re testing a completely new market or audience segment, a pilot campaign with a specialized partner makes sense. When you need a specific creative execution for a product launch and require niche expertise, a targeted engagement is better than forcing a long-term partner to step outside their competency.

The mistake isn’t using one-off campaigns. It’s using them as your default approach when partnership models would deliver better returns.

“We’re selective about the projects we take on,” Gerboles Parrilla notes, drawing from his practice of only working with companies he genuinely believes in. “But when we commit to a client, we’re thinking in years, not quarters. That mindset shift changes everything about how we approach strategy.”

The Infrastructure Advantage

Long-term partnerships enable something one-off campaigns can’t: the development of custom infrastructure tailored to your specific needs.

A one-off partner uses their existing tools, processes, and reporting systems because building custom infrastructure for a single engagement doesn’t make economic sense. A long-term partner can justify investing in custom dashboards, specialized tracking, automated reporting, and integrated systems to improve ongoing execution efficiency.

Over time, this infrastructure advantage compounds. What takes a one-off partner five hours to execute and report might take a long-term partner one hour because they’ve built systems specifically for your workflow.

Gerboles Parrilla’s background in technology and automation informs this perspective. “We built our first company by identifying inefficiencies and systematizing solutions. The same principle applies to marketing partnerships. If you’re recreating the same processes every quarter with different partners, you’re wasting resources that could be invested in better infrastructure.”

Making the Switch: Transition Strategies

For companies currently locked in the one-off campaign cycle, transitioning to partnership models requires strategic planning. The first step is honest evaluation: are you switching partners because performance data demands it, or because organizational politics or impatience drives the decision?

If the data shows your current partners aren’t performing, switching makes sense. But if performance is acceptable and you’re switching, hoping for dramatically better results, you’re likely to simply restart the learning curve with similar outcomes.

“One of the most important lessons from my athletic career was learning the difference between a plateau that requires pushing through versus a signal that you need to change approach entirely,” Gerboles Parrilla explains. “Most marketing partnerships get abandoned during plateaus that would break through with continued iteration.”

The second step is reframing success metrics. Instead of judging partners solely on single-campaign performance, evaluate their trajectory. Is performance improving campaign over campaign? Are they developing deeper brand understanding? Are they bringing strategic insights beyond execution?

The Long Game in a Short-Attention World

The irony is that in an era obsessed with quarterly earnings and rapid growth, the companies building the most sustainable value are the ones thinking in multi-year time horizons.

Long-term marketing partnerships represent a bet that compounding returns from accumulated knowledge will outperform the theoretical gains from continually seeking better partners. The data increasingly support that bet.

For Gerboles Parrilla, this long-term thinking isn’t just a strategy, it’s a philosophy. “Peace comes from playing the long game. Pressure comes from constantly chasing short-term wins. I’ve built multiple seven-figure businesses by committing to foundations that take time to solidify but support massive growth once they’re in place.”

The question isn’t whether your marketing can afford to invest in long-term partnerships. It’s whether you can afford to keep paying the hidden costs of starting over.

Disclaimer: The content provided is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as professional marketing or financial advice. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, Pablo Gerboles Parrilla, and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any organization or entity. Every business situation is unique, and readers are encouraged to conduct their own research or consult with a qualified professional before making any business decisions.