Okay, so you have invested some money and time into building a marketing strategy or campaign strategy – great work! You have your plan of attack – you know what you’re saying, who you’re saying it to, what their pain points are, what will call them to action, what channels you are going to use to reach them, what resources it requires and how you’re going to execute it.
But now, you’re looking at the cost and thinking that’s a bit much… so you start to think about cutting things out or maybe you think, “I don’t really see the need for that bit so we won’t bother with it.”
Believe me, as an SME owner myself, I get it but…
Stop! Stop! Stop before you waste your marketing investment and effort!
Before you start cutting and slashing because you either want to save money or don’t think something really adds value. Go back to the strategy! How effective do you think an army general would be at successfully winning a battle if he started just randomly cutting out pieces of his plan of attack? “Oh, I don’t think I really need that regiment to attack from the rear we can just take them from the front. I won’t bother with digging the ditch for the troops to take cover in. They can just stand where they are and hopefully not got shot down.”
Or maybe you relate more to a lawyer planning your defence in court just deciding it will cost too much to investigate that lead or maybe you just don’t see the need to include that piece of evidence as was planned.
How successful do you think your defence will be if the lawyer deviates from the strategy because you arbitrarily left things out?
In marketing though, you can’t always see the benefit or reason for everything. When a strategy is developed, normally, the whole is the sum of its part. The strategy is designed to include many layers and hit many points to achieve the projected results. It’s often compounding — you need all the pieces to build upon, layer by layer.
If you start cutting pieces, then you can’t expect to still get the predicted results. In fact, often, it becomes false economy as you may have cut the budget but now you are wasting the money you spent because you are not actually implementing everything that was required to get the results.
Remember, marketing is an investment. By all means, rigorously question and investigate the strategy at the planning stage but listen to your marketing experts. After all, why pay for the expert’s advice (whether outsourced or in-house) if you’re not going to listen to it? If you do really need to cut the budget then talk to your marketer so they can see how they can make strategic cuts and understand that obviously it will affect what you get and the results achieved.
Once confirmed, have some faith in your plan and your marketing team and stay the course. Resist the urge to kill your marketing with a thousand cuts. Believe in your strategy and planning. Look to the future, not just today, and reap the marketing rewards.
