TheBusiness
A tale of fish fingers… Part
One Marketing: It’s easy to spend a fortune on marketing – getting it right is more important.
I
t’s tough out there – it has been for a while – it will be for a while yet. That means every penny counts in your business and making good investment
decisions is probably more important now than ever. Marketing is one of those investments that
is the fi rst to be dropped when the going gets tough. When you’re looking at short term belt tightening it’s tempting to think that cutting marketing spend will have little eff ect on the business. Indeed, this may be the case. In the longer term it becomes a vicious circle… You cut your marketing activity which results in a lower profi le for your company and brand, less awareness of your services and therefore fewer enquiries… your business turnover suff ers. You then have less confi dence in spending on marketing… and so it goes on. The truth is, marketing should more than pay for itself and if it doesn’t its not being done properly.
HOW DO YOU BREAK THE VICIOUS CIRCLE? After all, if it was a good idea to market your services before, why is it not now? True, the property market is considerably slower than
38 ● October 2012 ● TheNegotiator
it was before the recession, but it’s not dead. There is still a slice of the pie to be had, it’s just a smaller pie. There are two main reasons why marketing
budgets get cut when times are tough. ● 1) There is little or no confi dence that it will generate the required return or response; and
● 2) It’s diffi cult to judge whether it is making a diff erence.
I have been very lucky to have worked
with some of the most creative and best minds in the country - the creators of those
Confused.com ads, the Scottish Widow, Trio (go on, sing it…Trrrriiiiiiooooooo… ahem) and Club biscuits (if you like a lot of chocolate on
your… I’m on my own here aren’t I?) to name but a few – you might not like them but you remember them! One lesson is consistent across all of these
experiences. It wasn’t how to create a great marketing campaign, or a memorable brand or tag-lines and slogans. No, the biggest lesson that these marketeers taught me was that I know nothing at all – and neither did they. That’s not to say that these people and their marketing teams aren’t brilliant. They are. But what sets them apart is their realisation and acceptance that, no matter how clever, creative or confi dent you are you never know for sure what the outcome of any marketing is going to be.
“Birdseye dropped the old seafarer and replaced him with a chisel-jawed 30- something. It was universally
rejected by consumers.” Ian Laverty
www.thenegotiator.co.uk
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