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Blog posts tagged Budget
Cuts, cuts, cuts - but cut your marketing budget at your peril.
August 11, 2010
The media is full of one story – Government cuts. NHS cuts. City council cuts. All sorts of cuts! In times like these your marketing budget may feel like a luxury and history shows that in an economic downturn, the top of the list of cuts for businesses is marketing. But cut your marketing budget at your peril. Here’s why:
We live in a competitive environment. Brands are competing for attention like never before. Cut your marketing budget and your impact on your target audience will reduce significantly, if not die out because you’ll be swallowed by competitive.
It takes seven touches to move from being unknown into conscious awareness. Let’s use the example of Swirl Printers.
1. Potential client stumbles across the Swirl website from a Google search. They opt in to their e-newsletter.
2. They later receive the Swirl e-newsletter.
3. Then they see a Swirl advert.
4. At a networking event potential client meets a Swirl representative. Potential client takes a Swirl leaflet promo.
5. Potential client comes across the Swirl leaflet promo a few days later and places it in a draw for safe keeping.
6. Another Swirl e-newsletter reminds them of the leaflet promo in the drawer.
7. They visit the website and can quickly find further information on the promo (reinforcing the leaflet). The telephone number is easy to spot and they take action.
Without a marketing budget Swirl Printers would not have had the website, e-newsletter, advert, the representative at the networking event or the leaflet promo.
The seven touch theory also relates to the process of increasing brand awareness. Through those seven touches, Swirl Printers increased their brand awareness to their potential customer. Educating your target audience about your brand takes place through a similar progression of drip fed communications. You’ve got to speak to your target audience frequently so they do not forget your brand.
In a downturn marketing it is even more important than it was before! It is now more than ever that you want to attract customers. Therefore you need to communicate. Since many people stop marketing in a down turn, if you keep it up, or even increase it, you will be at an advantage.
I’m not talking about a million pound budget! I’m suggesting you cover the basics and do it well. You need a simple but effective website that is up to date; some information you can give out on request such as a promo leaflet, booklet or e-mailable PDF; exposure in the form of adverts or articles in relevant magazines, on or off-line; and if your target audience is other businesses then keep networking.
And then there’s the free stuff. They demand some of your time but they do wonders to raise your profile if you add value and are consistent. Use Twitter; blog regularly; get on LinkedIn; write and post articles and press releases; and, offer to speak at relevant events.
These are just a few hints and tips. Don’t follow the trend of cuts, cuts and more cuts. Rather invest in your marketing wisely.
What shape is your marketing budget?
June 30, 2010
The questions I most often get asked about marketing budgets are:
- How much should I spend as a percentage of turnover?
- Should I benchmark against competitors?
- How much shall I spend on each discipline (PR, DM, Events, Ads, etc.)?
All totally reasonable questions… but what you should be asking is: what shape should my marketing budget be? Seriously, it is the most important question there is on the budgeting front. So, let me tell you what I mean.
A decent marketing programme is centred on a sales funnel, onto which you’ve mapped the decision making process for your target audience. (see previous posts Making Marketing Pay, and What to Say When).
Fig1: Chart to show the influence of marketing spend across the sales funnel
From this you can put together a programme of activity that moves a person from awareness to a sale. Each marketing technique has a different level of influence at each stage of this process. You need to determine the level of influence at each stage, then apportion this across the funnel.
There are a few ways to decide the amount of influence each technique has:
- Workshop with the sales and marketing team to agree the apportionment
- Surveys or focus groups amongst new customers to get them to assess what they saw at each stage (this can be tricky, as people often post-rationalise decision-making, meaning that emotional triggers are downplayed)
- A best guess (hey, we’ve all got to start somewhere)
- A combination of all of the above.
From this exercise you now have a powerful tool for designing programmes and allocating budget. Now analyse your budget in the same way:
- Split your spend into each technique
- Apportion this spend as per the influence amount you’ve worked out for that technique (for example, if you worked out that PR has 40% influence at awareness, 10 per cent at interest, etc. your spend on PR should be tabulated to reflect that)
- You now have an actual shape for your budget
Compare your actual budget shape to the ideal budget shape you’ve established to maintain a free-flowing sales funnel. This allows you assess where you’re spending too much or too little, and to adjust your spend according to the funnel requirements.
Now, if you have a budget cut, or find a pot of cash, you again have a powerful tool to decide how to adjust your spending. The crucial factor here is to maintain the shape. So, rather than cutting a project that happens to be the right level of spend, you can cut evenly across the funnel ensuring that you’re not leaving any gaps.
- Article originally appeared on Clear-Thought.co.uk
Emergency Budget — a little Wordle in your ear
June 22, 2010
We knew it would be painful. We had seen “The first cut is the deepest” trotted out more times than a prize pig. But was it really ever going to be all that bad from a small business perspective?
Yes, VAT will go up to 20 per cent in January and cuts to business support have been outlined. But if you are one of the UK’s small businesses, there are some useful measures in place to ensure that you are part of the growth of the nation.
George Osborne said “Britain is open for business” on more than one occasion and with small business tax being cut to 20 per cent from next April and the employers’ National Insurance threshold increasing to £21 above inflation, there are reasons to be cheerful.
The Wordle above shows that “public” and “spending” featured prominently in the Chancellor’s speech, and that he studiously avoided the word “cuts” - even though he mentioned frequently the “billions” that need to be shaved off the national debt.
Pride of place is occupied by the word “tax”. Obviously, without taxation, the Government wouldn’t get close to recouping the billions that are required to get the economy on an even keel.
“Government”, “people”, “country” and “public” share a near equal billing, which is indicative of the “We are in it together” rhetoric that featured heavily during the election campaign. With such unequivocal fiscal measures taken today, the Government is keen to stress that the burden is to be shared among us all.
Ten signs that you could do with strategic marketing advice
June 21, 2010
There are hundreds of potential marketing advisors for a small business owner. From design agencies, PR specialists, telemarketers, SEO experts, social media bods, media planners, and on, and on. It’s difficult to know who to talk, when and why.
Here are ten signs that you could do with some proper strategic marketing input:
- You’re not 100% sure where new business actually comes from – how do they find your site? What prompts them to pick up the phone, etc?
- You’ve done some work with an agency, but you weren’t too chuffed with the output – what was the brief?
- You get lots of leads, but they don’t seem to convert – what is the sales journey, and how well supported is it with powerful marketing content?
- You get enquiries for work that you don’t really like doing – is your business clear about what it does best?
- You’re always screwed down on price – does your brand and messaging set your business apart?
- When asked what your business does, your people all say something different – is your team clear on what you’re about?
- You rarely get repeat business or referrals – is your customer marketing and networking strategy creating advocates for your business?
- If one big customer left you’d be in trouble – is your business over reliant on one customer, or one market?
- You’ve tried telemarketing, PR, advertising or another tactic and it hasn’t delivered – do you have an integrated plan with momentum that all fits together and ties into your sales process?
- You’ve read the books and been to some courses – do you know that you need to give marketing some attention, but never quite get around to it when you’re back at the office?
These are all real scenarios that we’ve heard from small business owners in the last 18 months. Small businesses often make do with a ‘marketing-come-reception’ set-up, working with the marketing suppliers run by friends of friends, or the people down the road. And, there’s nothing wrong with that…if you know exactly what you’re doing on the marketing front. If you have an effective strategy clearly mapped-out, and a good grasp of the interplay of the key marketing tactics, you can indeed put together a top notch freelance team to deliver against your sales and marketing objectives. If, however, you’re feeling your way through the discipline, working it out as you go, then you’ll probably find that each supplier you speak to seems to sound pretty sensible.
You may struggle to find your way through all the ‘good ideas’ that they come up with to configure a watertight marketing operation that supports every step of your sales funnel.
In larger organisations it’s the job of the marketing director to pull all this together. Coming in on salaries upwards of £65k, most small business owners we meet simply can’t afford to have a hard-hitting marketing director on their team. So, what do you do? If you find yourself nodding in recognition at any of the statements above, it would be sensible to find yourself a strategic marketing partner who can be your marketing brain – working out what you need to say, to whom, when and through what channel.
- Article originally appeared on Clear-Thought.co.uk
How do you like them apples, eh?
March 30, 2010
As a resident of the West Country, I am accustomed to the fact that cider is a way of life round these ’ere parts. When Blackthorn changed their recipe last year and went for a big relaunch, billboards were defaced, Facebook pages launched and free samples through the local paper were rejected. Believe me, a Bristolian does not reject free cider readily. The resulting public campaign to return to the original recipe won through and the brand conceded defeat.
In Bristol there is a boat that has been converted into a bar that goes by the name of The Apple and sells the juice by the bucket load. There is also a small, tucked-away, gem of a pub in Clifton called The Coronation Tap - or to those more affectionate or slurred of speech, The Corrie Tap. Here they sell a cider known as ‘Exhibition’ and such is its potency they only sell it by the half pint.
Last week’s Budget heaped misery on the West Country, with dear Mr Darling making cider play taxation catch-up. A 10 per cent increase came into effect as of Sunday and in doing so brought cider in line with beer, spirits and wine for relative taxation value. While stories of queues stretching for miles — akin to a petrol price hike — are greatly exaggerated, it is the talk of the town.
Tonight the BBC’s ‘The One Show’ is filming a feature on the popularity of the drink at the fabled Corrie Tap (free samples from 6pm I hear). Will I see you there?
Editor’s round-up: cakes, cash and a wordle
March 26, 2010
It’s been a great week: fun, exciting and we’ve had the best traffic figures ever on the Marketing Donut. The most popular single item of the week was our case study of the online cupcake community, How we got together online to boost our cupcake business.This produced a fantastic response within the world of cupcake makers, who spent the whole week sharing the article and spreading the word about the Marketing Donut. I’d like one of these, thanks guys:
But probably our biggest draw overall this week was our extensive Budget coverage on Wednesday – and this is what made it such a busy and exciting week. I blogged live as the Chancellor read his speech, the team tweeted like crazy and we published a Budget round-up and the reaction from small businesses before the end of the day.
We were really pleased to be the only news organisation to spot the National Minimum Wage increase on Budget day itself. This wasn’t in the Chancellor’s speech, but buried deeply in the Budget Notes where it was spotted by one of our eagle-eyed editors. We called the Treasury, checked it out and slipped it into our coverage minutes before publication. Result.
The Budget also produced my favourite thing on the Marketing Donut this week – our James’s rapid response analysis of the Budget in words and pictures. Take a look; it made me smile.
Post-Budget, it was an early start on Thursday morning for a trip to our Bristol office where I delivered an editorial training and went to the Bristol Twestival in the evening. This fundraising networking event was kind of a who’s who on the Internet in Bristol, which is a real new media hub. It got a bit raucous and raised in the region of £4,000 for Concern Worldwide, who are no doubt very happy indeed. Good stuff.
Now it’s back to earth and the business of providing good marketing information to small businesses. We’ll be updating our favourite things with more books, videos and websites you should be reading, watching and visiting, Plus, we’ll have information on mobile phone apps, advice on closing a sale and tips for making your business stand out from the crowd.
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