What to Do When Your Marketing Budget Is Cut
Nobody really knows at this stage how to appropriately plan their budget for next year - will things improve or will they get even worse? What should I put add to (or delete from) my budget to make sure I get the optimal outcomes?
The ANA recently polled conference attendees about their marketing mix, budgets, plans, and tactics throughout the event (covered by MediaPost). The results show the following:
- 33% said spending will be reduced and 33% said spending will be constant / marketing mix will be reallocated
- 56% of CEO think of brand-building as an investment, while 21% think it's an unaccountable but necessary expense
- 70% currently measure brand growth according to sales and net income, while others use third party brand equity valuations (15%), shareholder value (9%), household penetration (4%) and company culture (3%).
- What to Do When Your Marketing Budget Is Cut - While your management wants you to react immediately, you know that an ill-considered elimination of marketing support can quickly translate into a disastrous drop in sales. Rather than responding hastily and arbitrarily just to show activity, I recommend performing a quick analysis of your situation to get a better understanding of your best business alternatives. This will help you to redirect your marketing budget to maximize results.
- Using Search Data to Drive Annual Budget Planning - This year an uncertain economy will leave its mark on all line-items, search included. And even though search spending is likely to remain flat, the clever search marketer will present a refined strategy based on changing consumer tastes, as evidenced by recent search data and offline indicators. Assuming that the smart marketer has been analyzing such data for years, 2008-2009 is the time to put it to the test.
- Rethink Your Search Marketing Budget for 2009 - Data shows that 49% of marketers set their PPC budgets too low and burn through that money too quickly. Many marketers also consider SEO efforts as “free,” causing them to overlook the costs of external consulting or in-house staff time needed to implement tactics. The article provides advice for "creating a budget that will help you optimize your dollars" including tips that cover setting goals based on the quality of the leads or customers generated by search marketing,combining SEO and PPC into one search marketing budget, carving out a percentage of your search budget for testing, analyzing past campaign and testing results for new activities, and supporting your budget requests with facts.
Posted by Universal Ad
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