Marketing cannot be a cost centre

Marketing is not a cost centre…
 
…but it absolutely should behave like a profit centre. Marketers should expect to have their budgets cut if they don’t embrace the hard fiscal realities of making one dollar turn into two.
 

Because of a commonly held view of marketing as a cost centre, many companies will cut marketing budgets [...]

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Making the most out of your sales funnel

This isn’t going to be another long piece theorising about the impact of the economy on your marketing activity (there’s more than enough of those around), rather a focused piece on a few practical things you can do to improve your sales numbers.
Whilst retention is key (and the lowest hanging fruit) you cannot ignore acquisition. [...]

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Selling in recession – Making the most out of what you have

Let’s not go over old territory (even though it’s reasonably recent).
We know about the downturn, we know about changing consumer sentiment etc., what we don’t know is what 2009 will offer.
This requires a rethink of what your business plans to do, including some rigorous examining of your marketing activity and its outcomes.
Here’s a few things [...]

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Rethinking your spend and increasing efficiencies

Everyone’s being asked to do more with less at the moment. Is this a bad thing? No, I don’t think so.
Opportunities present themselves when you’re forced to question and re-assess where you spend your money. Should you continue doing what you’ve always done? No. Should you throw money at risky ventures? No. Should it all [...]

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Social media – bring your commitment to the table, or save your money

Social media sites and tools are growing exponentially, so you need do get in their too right!!
Wrong.
If you’re not prepared to invest the time it takes to succeed save your money. You need to bring your sense of commitment, more so than your wallet.
Many companies don’t want to invest time and energy into forging connections [...]

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Planning for the future

This post isn’t exclusively for the digital space, but is more to do with how businesses need to maintain a focus on current activities whilst actively thinking about the future.
Where this is particularly relevant to the digital space though is the phenomenal pace (certainly in relative terms) that whole categories are being disrupted by new ways [...]

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