On average marketing can reduce its spend by 35% and either become a hero function by doing more with less or using what it has to generate higher results. The key is cutting the wasted budget.
Nearly every single marketing department can reduce wasted time and spend within the next 3 months if it really wanted to and was driven to – but will you do it?
Cutting marketing wastage
There are two places to analyse and determine how to make the changes you need:
1. Is your marketing budget really being spent on result-driven activities?
- How many different pieces of content do you produce each year that never get used more than once?
- How many events do you support with no defined end-value?
- How many initiatives do you put energy into that don’t take-off?
- How much content do you prepare with generic messaging in?
2. You, your team and the way you work – be critical thinkers, your time is valuable – don’t waste your time:
- Trying to guess what sales think and getting it wrong
- Being on endless hours of repetitive calls with little benefit
- Being a delivery engine for events support rather than creating impact
- Getting bogged down in planning and not delivering
- Playing the politics games that drain resources, energy and time
We all want to be effective and results-driven and can be. The problem is in organisations we become conditioned to the complexity of doing a good job and getting things done.
Many years ago, I took over a marketing department that spent 4 months planning and 8 months delivering and was failing to deliver its goals. Quite simply I found a way to reduce the complexity of the planning process to create a 4-week disciplined critical focused end-to-end cycle. In 12-months we reduced the marketing budget by 30% and increased results by 25%. I also had a happier team, happier CEO and a blueprint that was in place for the next 5 years. Making my job easier!! Win-Win-Win.
As a team we had four questions that we always asked on anything we planned or anything that came across our path:
- Is the foundational strategic messaging, right?
- How can we start small, quickly, adapt and scale something that works?
- How can we keep it simple and avoid complexity?
- How do we measure success?
The reward is worth the effort. It’s hard to take a brave step-back from the complexity of the situation you are in – but if you don’t you will create something that supports or becomes bogged down in that complexity – and you’ll stand less chance of making a difference. As a regular exercise its something healthy to do – get a different perspective and give it a try – it’s the only way to see if it works.
