Smarter Ways with a Smaller Marketing Budget

For many companies, fall is a time to start looking ahead as their fiscal year comes to a close and planning begins for the next year.  I’m sure everyone is glad to leave behind 2009 but despite encouraging signs from some sectors of the economy, most companies are still very cautious about their prospects for the coming year and want to understand how to get best value for their marketing dollars. I’ve been spending a fair amount of time working on marketing plans for some clients, and while they have varying budgets and different target audiences, there have been some common responses to smaller marketing budgets.

• Cut out program elements altogether: stop advertising completely or stop attending all shows.
• Do more with less skilled staff: push junior team members to fill the roles that that senior people used to perform.
• Do less of the same: fewer webinars, fewer trade shows, less advertising.

What’s the impact of such decisions? There’s financial expediency and then there is perception.  Who was it that said “Perception is reality”?

Stopping completely. One client has a competitor who has vanished completely from trade shows and magazine print ads. This has generated speculation about the financial viability of that company, an extremely negative perception to contend with, especially in an industry where customers count on long-term supplier relationships.

Doing less of the same would have been a better decision for this competitor.  Tightening the belt is a responsible decision that people can understand, but vanishing from the scene only confirms their worst suspicions and create concerns even for loyal customers. You still need to reach out and convey your message; no communications means you have no way of exercising control over market perceptions. Bump up other means of communication: do more cost-effective online/email promotions, drop some postcards in the mail, submit case studies to those magazines to get some free publicity (and make sure they are well-written).

Using less skilled people. I’ve known start-ups who tried to economize by hiring inexperienced (cheap) programmers, marketing staff, or salespeople.  This is a false economy: think about the ultimate cost of poor code or product being late-to-market; think about untrained salespeople ruining your reputation with customers.

And as for marketing, anyone can spend a lot of money and make it look good, but when you have a severely constrained budget, that is the time you most need experienced, effective marketing professionals; otherwise the risk is a “marketing plan” that is just a list of things-to-do that don’t deliver results – in the end, a waste.  In my opinion, start-ups are the ones that need experienced people the most.  They can’t afford to be training staff on-the-job; they have a critical window in which to deliver results.  Senior marketing professionals are the ones who can analyze results, review goals, and re-tool campaigns to support your business goals. You want people who can draw from a deep well of experience, assess what will and won’t work for your situation, and execute on plans with no fuss. If you are unable to hire, at least bring in an experienced consultant to develop a plan for you. Your junior staff will do a far better job of executing on a good marketing plan with some guidance.

Doing less of the same. Of the three typical responses I’ve dealt with, this would seem to be the best option, but even this merits some re-thinking. When your budget gets cut and even when it doesn’t, it’s always good to review the effectiveness of past activities and consider whether those same campaigns would be effective under current conditions. Get creative with less resources rather than just doing less.

Trade shows are expensive, and often the first to go.  But are there other ways of achieving presence at a particularly important show? Frankly I’ve never thought of booth presence as the reason for attending a show. Your best ROI comes from setting up meetings before the show, and using the event as a convenient place to meet. If your company has a culture of using trade shows as a venue for holding pre-scheduled meetings with customers, prospects, or editors, then you are in a good position to achieve good results without a booth by going ahead and scheduling those meetings as usual before the show; but rather than meet at the booth, meet elsewhere at the show.  I’ve known companies who rented hotel suites and used them very effectively as private meeting rooms. It’s all in the pre-show preparation.

As for print ads, you may want to run them less frequently or go from full-page to half-page.  But don’t just cut back, think of ways to continue maintaining visibility: can you increase the frequency of email newsletters? Create some inexpensive postcard mail outs? Is this a good time to launch some web seminars to educate prospects and nudge them along the sales cycle?

I don’t consider any of these observations to be original or brilliant.  But at times like these when the economy is bad, clients seem to freeze up and forget the lessons of the past.  Consider this blog entry as a gentle reminder that there are always creative ways to maintain visibility and a strong message – even with a reduced budget. Just don’t vanish from the horizon – it could cost you more in the long run.