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Why Outsourcing Your Marketing to a Marketing Expert is Crucial in a Tight Economy.
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Why Outsourcing Your Marketing to a Marketing Expert is Crucial in a Tight Economy.
Outsourcing your marketing to a marketing expert in a tight economy, and you’ll achieve a better result from competitors who stop investing in marketing.
The High Cost of Cutting Marketing Budgets
In economically challenging times, it's tempting to cut marketing budgets. However, reducing your investment in marketing will likely lead to a decrease in sales.
Some companies will choose to go tactical - and focus on short-term tactics in an attempt to boost sales. This shift away from strategic planning can lead to an unbalanced marketing plan, increased costs, and suboptimal results.
While we will always respect a company's decision to reduce its marketing spend, this move can be counterproductive – and we can usually predict the outcome.
Marketing is a critical driver of brand trust, sales, and growth. Reducing investment in this area can ultimately result in lost sales and profits.
In tighter economies, the size of markets often shrinks. Competition in your market intensifies as businesses scramble to capture a smaller pool of available sales.
Faced with a smaller slice of the market, companies must increase their marketing activities to maintain or grow their sales and grow.
The Dangers of Losing Market Share.
Losing market share and sales during economic downturns requires a much larger effort (and investment) to regain lost ground when the economy improves.
While some companies will cut back on marketing, others that continue to invest can better maintain and grow their market presence.
Two unchangeable principles of marketing are:
- Long-Term Commitment: like investments in the stock market, marketing is not a short-term investment. It requires an ongoing commitment and a consistent presence to build brand trust, sales, and sustainable growth
- Risks of “Stop-Start Marketing”: Starting, stopping and restarting marketing leads to a loss of traction, brand recall and sales. Restarting marketing can take six to 12 months to regain lost momentum.
Case Study: A membership organisation ceased their established marketing activities under new management, aiming to cut costs.
Without an expert marketer guiding their marketing, they attempted to copy the strategies used by the past expert marketer without the expertise.
The result was a significant drop in membership numbers from over 9,600 to below 8,000 which will take many years to recover.
Leveraging Expertise for Better Results.
Expert marketers understand where you can and cannot take shortcuts. They know how to prioritise and optimise marketing to achieve a better result sooner.
Consider these facts:
- Comprehensive Skillsets: A marketer who gets great results is an expert in branding, strategy, digital communications, PR, social media and email marketing.
- Adapting to Changing Trends: Marketing strategies that worked last year may not work this year. Marketing requires expertise, ongoing education and continuous improvement to achieve sustainable long-term success.
If you have comprehensive marketing skillsets and the expertise to know when and how to adapt your marketing strategies, that's excellent. However, if you lack these capabilities, seriously consider outsourcing your marketing.
Example:
A distributor company gave the responsibility of their marketing strategy to a sales manager while we continued with implementation. A year later, the client indicated that they had a $1 million decline in sales and asked us to take back responsibility for their marketing strategy over again.
Achieving Sustainable Long-Term Growth
Sustainable growth requires consistent marketing activities in the market. This involves a solid brand strategy, a robust marketing plan, and excellent execution.
Startups and micro-businesses often view marketing as unaffordable however, a lack of investment in marketing negatively impacts sales growth.
Sometimes with startups we see accountants set their marketing budget with no knowledge of marketing - and sadly if the budget is insufficient we can often predict the outcome.
Qualified marketers use proven frameworks and systems, undertake professional development and continually optimise activities, delivering repeatable and reliable results.
Our Strategy during Economic Downturns
At Sustainable Marketing Services, we increase marketing activities during economic downturns to compensate for tougher market conditions.
Other actions we will undertake include:
- Re-assess and revise marketing plans
- Assess what is not working and why
- Improve the performance of individual tactics
- Identify tactics to reduce or eliminate to save money
- Introduce new strategies to boost sales.
When revising a marketing plan we also ensure it has the right balance of marketing strategies across both digital and traditional marketing which helps boost sales.
This proactive approach ensures that when the economy improves, our clients are well-positioned to leapfrog competitors who reduce their marketing activities.
Looking to Enhance Your Marketing Performance?
Sustainable Marketing Services is an award-winning Brisbane digital marketing agency with a long history of delivering sustainable success for our clients.
If you are considering outsourcing your marketing to improve your marketing performance and achieve sustainable growth contact us.
Sustainable Marketing Services is an award-winning Brisbane digital marketing agency with a long history of delivering sustainable success for our clients.
Book a complimentary meeting on 07 3446 5837 or via email us here.