Building Marketing Effectiveness While Reigning In Costs

A recent survey reported that 90% of CMOs were facing significant cuts to marketing budgets.

Even as there is a significant amount of research that shows the long-term benefits of maintaining marketing spending, the practical matter is that budgets have to be responsive to significant changes in the business environment. As a result, marketing teams will need to search for efficiencies, better leverage current technology, and begin the exploration of new marketing channels.

Media Efficiency

Looking at your current media mix will be an excellent place to start looking for efficiencies. Especially digital media, as most other channels face declining audiences as even digital audiences are growing at unprecedented rates. So now is the time to make sure your digital marketing ready to pick up the slack. Also, examine the costs for your media placement. How much is your media being marked up, and are you paying a management fee as well? Most agencies use one or the other and sometimes both. Ensure you understand what you are paying as well as the number hours they put in to support your account.

If your department manages media, but you no longer have the same level of internal support, outsourcing can be cost-effective and may even improve results. Likely, outsourcing any capabilities will be a painful topic, but just as IT departments no longer manage rooms of servers. Marketing departments increasingly are required to focus on managing outcomes - brand awareness, engagement, close and conversion rates, and lifetime value of customers, rather than many of the actual activities.

Use the Technology You Have

Few companies haven’t recently updated their marketing stack with a variety of tools for managing marketing, sales, digital marketing spend, and social media. Each of these tools brings an incredible array of capabilities that can improve the efficiency of your marketing. First, by managing the whole customer lifecycle. Second, by equipping your organization with in-depth analytics to understand what is successful. As always, the time to fully realize the potential of these tools has rarely been available. 

Experiment with New Marketing Channels

Most marketing departments have considered one or all of the following, Influencer marketing, video, webinars, podcasts, TikTok, and LinkedIn. Often holding back because of the time needed to develop an approach that will pay off even as the startup costs are typically low. Now is the time to start looking for new ways to connect with potential customers and do everything possible to support your current customers. Selling isn’t your highest priority. Instead, you are looking to see how you can build an audience. 

Companies that respond to the challenge of finding efficiencies and finding new ways to connect with potential customers will be able to sustain their marketing even as they adjust to the reduced budgets and headcounts.

Want to find ways to make your marketing more efficient and creative? You can always contact us to learn more about how we help companies manage the marketing elements that drive sales growth.