Hi, I am the managing partner of a substantial professional services company. We have grown to where we are today through word-of-mouth, referrals and to a lesser extent the networks of the active partners.
In order to go to the next step we believe we have to sell ourselves in a more public way – but we don’t really understand where and how we can achieve what we want.
However, at a recent management meeting this issue was discussed in detail and we realised to our amazement that we actually spent in excess of $100,000 in the previous 12 months on marketing!
This money was spent on a web site upgrade and overhaul, electronic newsletters, seminars, sponsorships and entertainment of Clients.
Having realised the extent of our current marketing investment we do not want to spend even more – however we do need to know how we can make the right decisions on where and how to spend our investment in order to get the cumulative growth we want.
Ken G – North Sydney
Thanks for your question Ken. Wow! That figure must have brought some silence to the management meeting. You wouldn’t believe how often we see mid-sized companies ‘discovering’ the true extent of their marketing budget. I’ll try and simplify our response as I believe the direction you need is also quite simple.
For some reason many business people treat marketing as some abstract concept that devours money without rhyme or reason and requires no substantiation other than “it feels like something we should do”. Like any set of decisions affecting your business there needs to be a discipline or set of measures on which your decision is valued.
In the case of marketing, your Marketing Strategy would provide this decision-making criteria for all stakeholders across your business.
Marketing without a strategy is like sailing a yacht without a compass.
At BrandQuest, our marketing strategy program delivers to a business what we believe are the fundamental marketing foundations – and from these deliverables a company has the objective measures and criteria to make all and every marketing decision and initiative. Here are the 6 fundamental questions YOU MUST have the answers to in order to make valued decisions and judgments regarding marketing:
1. What you need to be saying
2. Who you need to be saying it to
3. What makes you different from your competitors
4. Why you can say the things you do
5. How to say it for best effect
6. When to say if for maximum impact
Of course there are many more answers that may underpin a robust marketing strategy – but if you haven’t these fundamental answers then you should consider the value of your current ad-hoc approach to marketing and place your $100k or more on your bottom line where at least you know its value to your business.