As the economy recovers and businesses
are getting more bullish about investing for growth, it is important that you
are prepared to optimize your return on your marketing investment. When developing your future plans, here are
six ways to help make your investments in staffing, capabilities and programs more
productive as you work to grow your business.
1.
Have clearly defined long term
marketing goals and strategies that are agreed to across senior management.
This
may seem obvious, but having clearly defined marketing goals and strategies
that are well understood, agreed to and supported by senior management will
help you achieve your business goals.
Take time to make sure your senior leadership team truly understands and
buys into both your short term and long term marketing strategies and
plan. If your senior management team is
not engaged in the marketing planning process, you need to consider how to
change that.
Once
this team is aligned in what the goals are and how you are working to achieve
them, you are more likely to be successful.
If Marketing and other key departments (Sales, Innovation or Operations)
are not aligned, you are more likely to run into turf wars and much less likely
to be successful.
2.
Don’t change your strategy every
year
It
can be tempting to develop a new strategy every time you develop your marketing
plan. Many marketers want to try
significant new initiatives every year.
Marketing needs to continually assess the market and determine when to
initiate new efforts – but the annual planning cycle should not always be the
catalyst to try something new. Assess
what is working for you and what is not.
Shifting major strategies each year costs you momentum and reduces the
return on programs that are underway and working. There should be some fresh, new elements in
your mix each year, but you should not overhaul your marketing strategy each
year if it is working and if that strategy is part of your 3-year plan. Consumers relate well to brand
consistency. If your advertising or promotions
are fatigued, update them, but do not overhaul your message and branding each
year just to try something new.
3. View
your marketing budget as a strategic investment
Frequently
when there is a sales and/or profit shortfall, CEO’s will cut the marketing
budget as a way to deliver company profit goals. This is more common in public companies with
quarterly earnings reporting.
While
Marketing can be viewed as discretionary spending and a source of funds to
protect profit delivery, cutting the marketing budget should be viewed as a
change in strategy. When setting your
goals and plans on a 1-year, 3-year and/or 5-year basis, you factor in
marketing funding for communication, promotions, and strategic
development. A reduction in marketing to
protect short term profits may result in strategic shortfalls that were not
anticipated. Funding cuts may eliminate
critical programs or strategic development for the future.
When
you set your budget, it is worthwhile to align and agree to the portions of the
budget that are long-term strategic investments that will not be cut in a
downturn. Also make senior management aware at the
beginning of the year that a budget cut mid-year will make it harder to execute
your strategy well – and/or may significantly disrupt your market
competitiveness.
If
you anticipate a rough year, it can be more effective to agree to a base plan
that is affordable, and then release additional marketing investment each
quarter that you exceed pre-agreed to criteria.
With this approach, you are consistent in your base strategy and initiatives,
and have funding to support building momentum as the business can support it.
4.
Use customer insights to guide and
refine your efforts
A
lot of companies talk about using the “Voice of the Customer” in their strategy
development, but many companies under invest or rely on insights that are
several years old to guide their efforts.
Understanding what is currently relevant and important in your customer’s/consumer’s
purchase decision process can make the difference between selling a little or
winning a category. If you are not
talking with both customers and non-customers each year about how they are
making purchase decisions, you are likely missing market opportunities.
Talking
with customers/consumers to test new products and programs can greatly guide
your development and launch efforts.
Rapid test and learn programs can cost effectively propel marketing and
innovation efforts forward and boost the likelihood of market success. Test and learn programs are relatively easy
to implement and can often have the highest long-term impact of any marketing
investment.
5.
Invest in building and maintaining
your marketing/web technology on an ongoing basis
The
fastest evolving area in marketing is the use of new and evolving technology in
the marketing mix. Companies are working
to hire people with experience in social media, mobile marketing and shopper
insights to stay competitive in their category.
It can be good to bring in this talent or work with agency partners who
can add their expertise.
When prioritizing investments in talent and technology, ask these questions: What is
critical is to continue your ongoing investment in marketing technology? Is your website up to date and accessible
across all mobile platforms? Do you have
a clear social media strategy and are you investing in both content and
community development? Are your email
and ecommerce platforms current and cost effective? Are you building your customer database and
database management tools for email marketing and market research use? Marketing technology should be considered a
strategic investment and a competitive advantage to be maintained, grown and
protected.
6.
Measure your progress and fine tune
your efforts
Companies
are working to measure many areas of marketing.
Focus on both key success criteria and steering criteria in your
measurement efforts. Success criteria
are goals to strive for to ensure that your program efforts and annual efforts
have achieved your goals via your chosen strategies. Companies are often good at setting big
success goals.
Steering
criteria should be limited to a few measures that can be regularly tracked and
monitored to fine tune your efforts.
These measures will usually not dictate a change in strategy, but
provide early and ongoing feedback on your progress so you can stay on track to
your goals. Using a dashboard of key
steering criteria will help you be more effective in your efforts and more
responsive to market dynamics.
There are, of course, other actions you can take to boost your marketing ROI. But if you are not actively placing focus on these six areas, you are missing an opportunity to improve your sales and revenues.
GrowthSpring
Group is a marketing strategy, market research and innovation firm focused on
accelerating your sales and profit growth. We help you identify new business
growth insights & opportunities and execute winning strategies &
plans.
