Marketing in a Tough Economy
By Niall Budds, Vice President of Marketing Operations


In these tough economic times, the pressure is greater than ever to wring every penny of value from marketing budgets. Marketers are shining a spotlight into every corner of their organizations, looking for efficiencies that will allow them to spend more time on the keys to success - strategy and planning - and less time on what is, too often, the hard labor of campaign execution.

Below are five key lessons we share with our clients to help them uncover and capitalize on marketing efficiency opportunities:

Lesson Number 1: Keep Your Friends Close and Your Customers Closer
Consolidate and deepen the customer relationships you have worked so hard to cultivate. Data-driven insights can help you succeed by revealing what customers care about and predicting what they will do.

As an example, we have been working with a large multi-brand retailer on deepening their customer relationships. The result? Increased cross-sell opportunities across brands and overall growth for the company.

Lesson Number 2: More Is Not Always Better
Make sure you don't fall into a “more is better” mindset, which can lead to an increasing number of campaigns that are not well aligned with your strategy or with your customers’ concerns and priorities. Have a well-defined set of criteria for making investment decisions (either of dollars or resource time). That way, you'll know when it's right to spend more, and when it's not.

Lesson Number 3: It’s Not Always Good To Talk
They say talk is cheap, but sometimes in marketing it can be very expensive. Decision-making processes can get bogged down in endless meetings. We urge our clients to develop some critical disciplines in this area, such as:

• Identify the decision-makers
  
• Specify decision-making criteria and voting rights
  
• Prepare for and firmly manage all standing meetings
  
• Keep an “audit trail” for all key decisions

Our work in this area with a leading consumer banking division enabled them to realize a significant decrease in meeting hours, fire drills and general rework.

Lesson Number 4: Let the Machine Get It!
Take advantage of the software applications that are available for marketing. Marketing Resource Management (MRM) tools are now “enterprise-class” and help manage standardized processes and establishes roles – areas where marketing has traditionally been weak. Campaign management and campaign optimization tools are now also rich in capability.

Recently we worked with a leading media organization on a new relationship marketing strategy for 2008 – and then helped them implement an MRM solution so they can effectively collaborate on and manage their many exciting multi-channel initiatives.

Lesson Number 5: Measure Twice, Launch Once
Measurement is fundamental—and more difficult than ever. Precision is the new standard – making sure that every individual investment is consistently meeting or exceeding well defined targets. Measuring performance with precision requires a combination of metrics, processes and tools.

We recently worked with a top 5 bank to aggregate individual campaign investments and performance metrics, creating a holistic cross-divisional view of marketing that will help them drive performance at a high level with precision.

Lesson Number 6: Monitor and Re-Balance Your Portfolio
Tough economies require a carefully monitored and well balanced marketing portfolio—not unlike a financial portfolio. We recommend the following framework for categorizing your marketing initiatives:

• Foundational Marketing Programs are the programs such as product brochures and basic websites that can be considered the cost of doing business.
• Operational Marketing Initiatives make up the bulk of the typical marketing spend and include activities such as sponsorships, advertising and direct mail. These are not necessarily new or innovative, but they can have an important impact on business value.
• Experimental Marketing Initiatives are essential to identify new and incremental sources of value creation. They may involve new types of marketing campaigns or media. They also may revolve around testing new or adjacent markets for growth opportunities.
• Transformational Marketing Initiatives are game changers. While they typically represent higher commitments and risk, they transform and reframe markets – setting the enterprise apart from its competitors by generating striking new forms of value.

As a simple exercise, take a look at your company’s marketing budget and classify your different expenditures into these categories. How much are you spending in each area? Is there an appropriate balance given customer needs, your goals, and the state of the economy? .

Where to Start?
Quaero has developed a proprietary marketing capability assessment tool, MAST – (Marketing Assessment Survey Tool), which is designed to pinpoint a marketing organization’s current strengths, weaknesses and areas for improvement—both today and over time as marketing efforts and priorities evolve.

Take the first step today with our Marketing Assessment Survey Tool (MAST). Learn about improvement opportunities that may exist for your organization. The first 50 people to take the MAST survey will receive a complimentary copy of High Performance Marketing: Bringing Method to the Madness of Marketing.

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