How To Make The Most Of A Limited Marketing Budget

Kunle M. — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 11:57:55 +0000

Here are some interesting insights that apply to all businesses, irrespective of size. However, this information is even more important if you are a small business working with limited resources.

I am often extremely vexed when I see or hear about companies that waste a lot of money on ineffective forms of marketing; clinging on to old myths like “I know half my advertising doesn’t work am just not sure which half it is”. Well in this day and age of advanced technology and thinking, an advertiser really should have more than a good idea as to what is working for his or her company.

Number one on Chris Cardell’s “Essential strategies to ensure that your advertising is a success” is – If your Advertising isn’t working – STOP IT.   I could not agree with this sentiment any more strongly. This rule might seem obvious, but as a magazine publisher with many years experience running integrated marketing campaigns both on the client and agency sides, I have seen too often people pour good money after bad advertising programs. So how do we ensure we eradicate waste in our advertising? By making sure our advertising is measurable, and by setting key performance matrices that we can measure and monitor our performance against, right at the beginning of any advertising program. The legendary Ad man David Ogilvy is quoted as saying “The most important word in the vocabulary of advertising is TEST. If you pre-test your product with consumers, and pre-test your advertising, you will do well in the marketplace.” I would go as far as saying even when your advertising is in the marketplace, you should continue testing your messaging with the aim of constantly improving it.

Companies should also ensure that they have the right proportion of direct response advertising to brand advertising. This proportion will depend on what stage of development a particular company is at.

Direct response advertising, like the name suggests, is advertising that produces a clear response, and is almost always characterised by having a clear call to action. Potential customers are called to request brochures or call a specific toll free number or even send a text to the company.

Brand advertising, on the other hand, is an important tool used by brand managers to communicate the ideals and values of a company/product, thereby increasing the company/product's perceived value to the customer. The benefits of developing or maintaining a strong brand is that it should lead to increased sales, by making a comparison with competing products more favourable. It may also enable you to charge more for the product, thereby increasing your profit. The most effective form of brand advertising is one that engages with its intended audience. The level at which it engages a particular target market is measurable, contrary to what some people might have you believe, it simply requires a different set of matrices and tools to that of direct response advertising.

Strong brands, like Rome, are not built in a day and many relatively small companies, are likely to be less interested in investing in activities that do not have an immediate impact on sales. They are more interested in generating an income now, and surviving, than anything else. Direct response advertising would be more appealing to such a company; as sales generation and developing a healthy sales pipeline is often the number one priority. To this effect you might want to employ in addition to direct response advertising other marketing strategies - telemarketing, direct mail, search engine marketing, email marketing, direct sales, PR, strategic alliances, and affiliate marketing.

Remember, however, that you can always build your brand in other non-advertising ways. Responding quickly and effectively to inquiries, maintaining a quality website and providing good customer-centric marketing materials can often enhance your company’s image more than a 30sec brand ad.

Now, I don’t want you to think I am against brand advertising, far from it. It just isn’t always the right option for all companies, and recognising that will save a lot of advertisers, advertising agencies and media owners a lot of hassle.
A proper appreciation of the place of brand advertising will help advertisers make more informed decisions about the type of advertising they should be doing so they can direct their ad agencies better. This in turn will help ad agencies focus their creative energy on coming up with messages that not only resonate with their target audience but work – to borrow again from Ogilvy “it’s not creative if it doesn’t sell”. In all this, media owners will be happy as their advertising clients and their respective ad agencies see an improvement in their businesses – which in turn will lead to greater revenue.

One of the most recognisable brands in the world, Coca Cola, a very important brand advertiser, in its early days was one of the early pioneers of direct response advertising, distributing thousands of coupons for a complimentary glass of Coca-Cola through newspaper ads.   It eventually went on to create an incredible brand.

At the centre of brand advertising, should be a brand idea. The bigger the idea, the better. A brand idea takes its lead from the philosophy that drives the company, in fact it is at it’s best when the two are indistinguishable. When they aren’t, the company runs the danger of coming across as either inconsistent or worse, insincere. Either way trust is eroded, and trust is vital when building a brand. Many commentators have asked the question whether brand ideas are too big for traditional notions of brand advertising. Can you really communicate the entire essence of a brand within a 30 second ad spot, and how do you balance that with the very important objective of most advertising, which is to sell the benefits of the product to the target audience. Well, I submit that you can’t, and why would you want to? In an age where people consume media through a variety of channels from the conventional to the not so conventional, an integrated approach that utilises the various strengths inherent within these multiple channels is what is called for. Brand values are reinforced with each encounter a consumer has with the brand. This goes a long way in building up the story of the brand within the target audiences mind.

By Dayo Elegbe Managing Partner, One Naija "The Results Driven Professional Services Company".

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How To Make The Most Of A Limited Marketing Budget