Guest Article
Mention marketing budgets to small business owners and a look of dread mixed with frustration may cross their faces. Why? Because marketing seems expensive on face value and almost anyone in business can recite a situation where “marketing” was a waste of money. This is a shame as marketing, when conducted properly, is the most cost-effective way to reach a mass buying audience and grow business. Marketing should pay for itself, however, poor decisions waste marketing budgets and ensure a lack of success:
1. Taking on too broad a buying audience
A critical component of successful sales is knowing one’s audience and tailoring one’s message accordingly. This is even truer in marketing where a company’s message is communicated on a mass scale, rather than within the easily adapted face-to-face sales environment. Mistakenly embracing an “all things to all people” approach requires either a generic message that doesn’t motivate anyone or a collection of materials addressing individual buyer types. It is worth the time and budget to correctly profile a business’s true buyer(s) who will actually yield sales.
2. Going overboard on promotional items
It’s simply not all that common for businesses to gain clients from giveaways like pens, koozies, stress balls, mouse pads, etc. These items almost always end up in junk drawers, the trash, or a kid’s toy chest, wasting marketing dollars. Promotional items have their place, but they need to be unique, truly useful in the buyer’s world, and desirable. In the same vein, unless a business has a knockout logo and an established brand with incredible caché, buying branded coffee mugs, t-shirts, and ball caps, etc. for resale is another way to flush money down the toilet.
3. Bargains now lead to spending more in the future
There are times when paying full price in marketing is the most budget-friendly decision as bargains, particularly in key areas, frequently lead to expensive fixes in the future. This is principally true in higher level work such as marketing strategies or brand plans, both situations where experience and expertise matter more than price. After all, a strategy will dictate other marketing efforts and a brand is the business’s visual identity. Cheap doesn’t cut it here, especially when a professional strategy will cost less than $2,000!
Another situation relates to business web site development. There are free and inexpensive website options available, but these are cookie cutter, functionally restricted sites that aren’t built with important technology like responsive design. Since the buying public is increasingly using mobile and tablet devices for web surfing, that inexpensive, technologically fixed web site may cost more in lost business from buyers who won’t deal with cumbersome technology than the price of a professional site. Fully responsive, custom sites are within reach (under $3,000), making this a marketing project worth the initial investment.
4. Ordering expensive brochures and sales folders
The days of printing thousands of multi-page corporate brochures and sales folders are rapidly going by the wayside for two distinct reasons. The first is that the buying public expects businesses to have a well thought out web site where they can find out more information. The second is that digital printing has been perfected to the point where ganging large runs of more generic materials to keep press costs down is no longer an issue. Affordable digital printing allows businesses to completely customize materials and print only what they need, ensuring fresh and on-target marketing.
5. Not following up on sales opportunities
An easy way to waste money in marketing is to focus on collecting leads without properly following up on them. Leads are absolutely useless until they are converted to sales!! Following up doesn’t mean having an intern send a form email or shuffling a lead from employee to employee before someone leaves a rambling voice mail weeks later. For marketing to have any value, a business must embrace a lead follow-up program and stick with it every time. A business should never be too busy to professionally follow-up on leads within 24-48 hours, preferably by someone at management level.
6. Hiring unqualified people to guide your marketing
“Hire experts in their field or risk spending money in either a repair job or revenue loss.” This is especially true in marketing, an industry that has become muddied and confusing to outsiders, most likely brought about by the number of graphic designers and print shops offering “strategic marketing” and “brand plans” when their expertise is in design. When it comes to marketing, if the firm isn’t planning on having an experienced marketer conduct exhaustive, custom research before developing a high level strategy, website message, or campaign concept, they’re not doing the business any favors and are wasting money.
“Marketing word” courtesy of David Castillo Dominici / www.freedigitalphotos.net
About the Author: Bonnie Taylor is CCS Innovations LLC’s VP of Strategic Marketing. Ms. Taylor has over 17 years of Strategic Marketing experience and has been instrumental in leading many small businesses to Inc 500 and business journal growth awards and international expansion. Her small business experience includes developing strategic marketing and creative programs from scratch, revamping failing efforts, and streamlining programs to meet limited budget needs. She is located in the greater Washington DC metro area.
With regard to point #2…
It might have been more balanced to point out that promotional products are, in most cases, the most targeted, effective, and cost-conscious advertising medium to reach an intended audience. See this research: http://www.ppai.org/inside-ppai/research/Documents/PR7A771_SalesPowerTool.PDF
You are certainly correct to suggest no company, large or small, should waste money on imprinted merchandise which has not been carefully thought through. That’s exactly why it is vital to work with promotional products professionals that know the marketplace, can analyze a company’s specific marketing NEEDS, and make budget-based suggestions which will have the most impact (ROI).
Many marketing professionals believe traditional advertising mediums are dying a not-so-slow death. For example, the DVR is hurting TV advertising, and we all have read about the shrinking circulations and the desperate shape both the newspaper and magazine businesses currently find themselves. Additionally, with ad-blocking software and all the clutter on the internet, it is quite difficult to reach an intended audience and have a genuine impact in the online space as well.
With that in mind, take a look at this study which compares the effectiveness of promotional products to print: http://www.ppai.org/inside-ppai/research/Documents/PromotionalProducts-Impact%20Exposure%20and%20Influence_SaleTool.pdf
Cheers.
Dan Pigott, President, DP Marketing, Inc.