Cutting your marketing budget because you can, doesn’t mean you should
By Joseph Cekauskas
Marketing Consultant & Strategist
JC Marketing Communications
When times get tough economically, businesses obviously look into areas where they can trim expenses. The likeliest candidate for the chopping block has proven to be the marketing/advertising budget.
Why?
A common mistake many organizations make is slashing their advertising budgets BUT they keep in place the same old advertising methods that simply aren’t working! Relying on those “hit or miss” methodologies and then cutting your marketing budget will lead to one result—you’ll still be losing money on your marketing efforts, ONLY not as much as you were before!
How does that make sense?
It doesn’t, of course. Yet, companies doing “general” or “image advertising” are forced to make random budget cuts because they are unable to effectively track what advertising is working and what isn’t. Our JC Marketing Communications (JCMC) philosophy is simple: we’re about return on investment (ROI) for our client. Every advertising dollar our clients spend must, at a bare minimum, return at least a dollar in sales. We don’t like to stop there—ideally, we always set the ROI bar higher.
At JCMC, we have developed profitable “direct response marketing” campaigns for B2B and B2C clients in a wide range of market segments. Each and every client has been able to track and measure the success of their campaign. As a result, we can effectively and wisely fine-tune how to focus their marketing dollars.
JC Marketing Communications CASE STUDY:
How a client came to realize there
are more benefits to advertising than
just “getting your name out there”
Before partnering with us, one of our clients (with respect to their privacy…we’ll call them ABC Company) had been spending $75K per year on insertion costs in the local newspaper alone. Not long ago, it was ABC Company’s position that they were advertising cheaply. After all, their ads were created “for free” by the publications in-house graphic designer and sales rep.
What they didn’t take into consideration was:
1. Newspaper graphic designers and ad sales reps are NOT results-driven marketing specialists.
2. The amount of effort and time ABC Company was wasting trying to be experts at something they weren’t (marketing). Instead of focusing on running their business, ABC Company’s management and staff would spend energy and time drafting “inner-focused” copy for all their ads and campaigns INSTEAD OF DEVISING WAYS TO BETTER SERVE THEIR CUSTOMERS. Do you think creating ads was an effective use of their resources?
ABC Company later disclosed to us that a majority of their strategy was to examine competitors’ efforts and then replicate the message—only in a graphically more appealing way.
Prior to working with us, ABC Company viewed advertising as “we just have to do something and get our name out there.” Because of this, they were forced to compete on price. And the only way ABC Company “felt” their ads were performing…or not—was hearing how often the phone rang. Even worse, ABC Company viewed their results, if any, by how many relatives…friends…or acquaintances called to “say they saw the ad.” Can you believe ABC Company had no methodology/systems that proved which ad effectively worked best? Statistically: ABC Company was inserting one…sometimes two ads per day/seven-days-a-week in the newspaper just to ensure potential prospects knew it existed.
After learning JCMC was “all about getting our clients a healthier return on investment” for their advertising dollar, ABC turned to us for a customized solution. We reviewed ABCs goals, drafted their strategy, and concluded that their initial campaign would be comprised of targeted, cost-effective ads.
The phase one ad concepts contained a series of ads (total of six)—2″ wide x 2″ inches high. We also created “stand-alone” ads (total of three) 4″ wide x 2″ high. As you can imagine, ads of this size do not provide alot of real estate, so the message had to be powerful.
The campaign JCMC developed for
ABC Company was successful on many levels:
1) In under ten months, we reduced ABC Company’s newspaper insertion fees from $75K to $38K. How? By utilizing low-cost, no-cost methods in the ads—this enabled ABC Company to publish, or run the ads less frequently.
2) ABC Company got a stellar ROI—exactly five times their investment (That’s $38K and our fees……times 5 = $$$) WOW!
3) ABC’s competitors saw the ads and fell back on their heels.
4) ABCs staff now focuses their energy toward customer needs and service (and less on ad concept/creation).
5) The profits from our strategies have allowed ABC Company the flexibility to venture into other mediums. Specifically, revenue streams were created and client services developed where once there were none.
If you’re looking for ways to improve your marketing message and save money on your advertising—call JC Marketing Communications of Connecticut 860.621.8866 AND set up a marketing consult. We’ll review your current methods and offer specific recommendations. It will be an eye-opening experience and the best investment you can make in your overall marketing plan.
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