An unfeasibly early start and a ninety-mile drive turned out
to be worth the effort as I earned my Full English breakfast at the Henley Business
Breakfast, organised by the Thames Valley Chamber of Commerce.
I was fortunate and my exertions justified on three counts: the venue was the highly agreeable setting of Hotel du Vin, occupying the former Brakspear Brewery site a stone's throw from the river in Henley-On-Thames; and the assembled business participants seemed reasonably interested in the vagaries of marketing in harder times.
During my conversations with participants over breakfast,
many acknowledged that marketing was an easy budget to target when revenues
shrink. And that gave me a challenge. I wasn’t preaching to the converted here
– client-side marketing professionals or agency people – so it transpired that
I had a story to tell.
My underlying message was simple: market intelligently. Some
were surprised by one slide that declared it was okay to reduce marketing
budgets. And this was followed by a few nods as I revealed the caveat that you
need to think really hard about how best to use what you have left.
There are often obvious contenders for what type of tactics
to reduce but less clarity about what to do instead. I pulled figures from
several sources to illustrate that large companies cut back harder than small
businesses (though of course they had more to spend in the first place); that
brand-focussed marketing typically gives way to direct marketing when things
get tough; and – the part that captured most interest – that online marketing strategies
gain significantly over traditional methods.
Most questions arose from a sample report sheet of a recent
email marketing shot we sent out for one of our clients. It was evidence of
just how much traceability you can build in to eDM (electronics direct
marketing) initiatives with the right tools. Stats like number of
click-throughs, who went where from the email, how long they stayed on the
landing page, what they did next, and a host of other metrics that make
intelligent marketing a reality.
Intelligent eDM activity executed properly tends to be the
most cost effective form of marketing - unknown territory to the majority of
the Henley Breakfast Members. But then, most were business owners or senior
managers or professionals, and not marketers, so how could they know what’s possible
with today’s technology-driven marketing armoury? Well, the answer’s easy: talk
to responsible marketing specialists.
By Steve Chapman, Protean Technical Director.
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