When times are tough, how do you reduce your marketing and communications spend but retain, or even grow, reach and effectiveness?
Everyone is in the same boat. Many industries are taking a pounding and corporate belts are being tightened. As usual, marketing and communications is one of the first areas targeted for cost cutting.
The bottom line is that the marketing budget has been slashed, but there is a need to retain the same level of reach and effectiveness. The problem however, is that if you continue to use the same marketing and communication channels as you have in the past, then a drop in spending will logically result in a drop in reach and effectiveness.
On top of this, as most marketers know, during tough times, when everyone else is in hiding and the market is quiet, there is a great opportunity to make yourself heard and capture market share at a relatively low cost. The situation really is the proverbial ‘Catch 22'.
The good news is that there are ways to achieve greater marketing results on smaller budgets.
To market more effectively and extract maximum value from available funds, you need to ensure existing communication channels are fully leveraged and investigate new and innovative marketing tools.
Here are some ideas on how you can make your marketing dollar go further:
- Leverage your dominant communication channels
The idea here is to piggy-back on existing infrastructure and expenditure. The channels that you are already using for normal communications can often also be used as carriers for marketing and branding at low cost. If you are communicating predominantly via one channel, then make sure you exploit that channel to its maximum.
For example, if you are doing most of your communication via telesales, then make sure you have a sales message to play when callers are on hold.
- Using one mechanism to do more than one job
Assess where you can use one tool/channel to directly benefit more than just your marketing department. If a tool created specifically for marketing can also be used for customer service, compliance, PR, research or other areas, then you will get buy-in from all those areas of the business and squeeze more value out of the tool. You may even get additional budget at a group level.
In addition, applying the principle to your own division by extending its marketing role to encompass communications, which covers nearly all aspects of the business, will enable you to leverage and justify your spend more effectively.
- Measuring each message and improving quickly
A basic marketing rule and mantra is "if you can't measure it, don't do it". This is even more evident in tough times. You need to be able to see which marketing messages and channels are not working - and which are - and respond accordingly.
This point is all about the best allocation of resources. Quick wins are key, and the only way to ascertain a win is to measure it. Measurement also ensures that you can quantify and justify your spend.
- Keeping it simple
The more complex, the more expensive - even if it doesn't look that way in the beginning. As a project becomes more complex, so the number of things that can go wrong increases. This stretches timelines and costs. If you undertake a complex approach, you will also not be able to explain to people how they fit in and they will shy away from the complexity. This means you won't get the needed buy-in and commitment.
Ensure you don't try to change the organisation or how it works, as this typically fails or has a high cost associated with it.
Once you have identified tactics that will work for your organisation, the next step is to build a business case to justify your approach to others in the organisation. This process will solidify your thoughts and bring other affected people into the picture.
By applying some creative thinking, leveraging existing communications and looking beyond traditional marketing tools, it is possible to increase the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns whilst spending less.