The planet. The world. Your business. Things happen quickly and it takes everything you’ve got just to keep up.
Take the current recession (even Greenspan just used the “R” word) – in every economic downturn business belts have to be tightened and budgets reexamined. Human resources and marketing historically have taken the hits.
Which is ironic, isn’t it? The lifeblood of your organization and the vital lead-generating activities get the ax under the guise of restructuring and saving money.
No need to spar with me on the checks and balances of a free market economy, but I will tell you this: don’t cut your marketing budget right now.
Mark and I have both talked about it here and there, and the consensus is the same: don’t cut your marketing budget during a recession.
A recent MarketingSherpa report called “Marketing During a Downturn” concurs. Here are some highlights from their survey results:
- Although 60% of larger companies are cutting their marketing budgets, smaller companies are only cutting by 13%.
- 34% of marketers at smaller companies are actually increasing their budgets.
- Marketers are investing more in direct marketing and less on branding.
- Executive management is siding more to NOT cutting marketing budgets.
- Sales cycles are lengthening so build your pipelines now.
- Marketers shifting strategies from traditional to online tactics.
It’s also about reallocating your marketing and PR resources to focus on generating more publicity, traffic and leads.
We call it the Marketing PR Lead-Gen Process(sm), a three-step process that produces measurable results focusing on:
- Infrastructure – your business strategy, messaging, website SEO and marketing website
- Content – white papers, research reports, case studies, surveys and webcasts
- Promotion – monthly media releases, search-optimized releases and direct marketing
And I’ll add an addendum to the “don’t cut your budget” – don’t kill the external marketing/PR services that provide you with the tools and resources to grow your business and the ROI to justify.
I'm not saying we can help you outrun an asteroid, but by using the new new and improved HRmarketer.com, HR suppliers will be far from being extinct.
Posted by Kevin GrossmanLabels: business strategy, direct marketing, human resources, marketing budget, recession
