Maximising the Marketing Communications funds
Maximising the Marketing Communications funds
Probably the hardest task that every senior marketing boss commonly faces is planning to maximise funds efficiency. Nowhere is this more consuming than when choosing on where to spend the marketing communications budget.
The exponential growth of new media covers every aspect of life from the second your (digital of course) radio alarm goes off in the morning through all the original offline media you’re exposed to over the course of the day. Once we go online and contemplate the huge demands on the funds related to email marketing, crusade machine optimisation, pay per click, web form and a plethora of other online marketing opportunities, the funds dilemma seems to become impossible. Various studies indicate the midpoint man living in a advanced country is exposed to everywhere between 3000 and 7000 differing advertising messages per day. If you’re targeting that person, then how do you pick the one or two messages that are going to grab their attentiveness and originate the right response? Even for extremely experienced marketers these are not easy decisions. Some will claim to take a extremely scientific advent but in this article we will treat the budgeting exercise as a aggregate of art and science.
The answers can be found in a few key areas: The size of your brand and business, the nature of your target market, the relative size of your competitors, the level of palpate you have gained from previous marketing performance and your personal predisposition to believe in a particular approach. I’ve packaged that into
Ten golden rules for planning an integrated advertising campaign:
1 Repetition builds awareness builds response
Don’t spread your funds too thin. It’s good to repeat your message three or four times to the same man in the same media than to spread your message to a wider audience that may only see it once or twice
2 Online marketing is fashionable but that doesn’t make it right for your business
If you know you can build your firm by expanding your web visits then online expenditure makes sense. But if your firm model is not dependent on your website be particular about throwing all your money online
3 The smaller your funds the more benefit social Relations can provide
Public Relations takes time and attempt but the results can be astounding and the monthly fee often equates to just one advertisement
4 The bigger your firm the more foremost brand building
As a massive generalisation, small businesses need to focus on construction response and every penny they spend on marketing is seeing for a short-term return. In the long run it’s the budgets that spend in brand construction that win but there’s no point in worrying about that when your funds is small.
5 Direct Mail and e-shots are the starting point for most small businesses
You can directly compare costs with return.
6 No more than 50% of your funds online
Ok that’s not honestly a golden rule as some businesses can prosper never appearing covering the virtual world. But it’s rare to find a target store that is not responsive to offline communications and on midpoint over 50% of ‘commercial’ web visits are driven by original media.
7 facts Is Power
Quite plainly the more you understand your target store and their media consumption the good you can plan campaigns that connect with them. Also if something has worked before it will probably work again, but not in quite the same way. So learn from your successes as well as your mistakes.
8 Don’t swim with the big fish
If you’re a small fish then swim upstream or downstream of the big ones Taken from Adam Morgan’s book ‘Eating the Big Fish’ this rule plainly says that challenger brands need to do things differently to the competition
9 Sponsorship is for laughs
If you have many millions of pounds or dollars to spend then sponsor a premiership football club. If your funds is smaller avoid spending too much money on uncomplicated brand awareness and make sure your brand values, unique selling points and call to performance are built into your marketing communications
10 Integrated communications are impressive
Even good than repeating your message to one man in the same medium is getting that message across to that man through different marketing communications. A direct mail piece, an e-shot, a press ad combined with a Pr article come together to make your funds look much bigger than it is
Finally, there’s an 11th rule too! If you can’t afford it then that rules it out. It seems inescapable but a lot of extremely experienced marketers make the mistake of wanting to try media they realize to be prestigious such as National Tv that soak up more than 50% of their funds and leave a lot of the more hard working, cost effective, quiz, driving media unaffordable.
To summarise, it’s art and science arrival together, there are no definite right answers but there are a lot of obviously bad ones. If in doubt get an integrated marketing agencyto help you decide. Expert agencies will always try to get as much of your funds as they can. An integrated branch might want practically your entire funds but it will work with you to maximise its effectiveness!
Maximising the Marketing Communications funds
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