According to Harvard Business Review’s CMO survey, 59% of marketing leaders have been experiencing increased pressure from CEOs to prove the impact of marketing spend. This focus on results is changing the way we think about customer journeys.
One of the major ways strategies are shifting in reaction to budget scrutiny is a move toward marketing technology. Companies are looking to their marketing tech stacks to develop a marketing strategy that can help them reach the overall goals of their business.
Managers are also finding that strategies are no longer best created and carried out alone. The combination of resources between multiple parties to create a joint go-to-market strategy can accelerate, scale and reach a larger global customer base.
But marketers still need a simple and clear approach in the face of budget cuts. How can they get the most out of their marketing spend and zero in on investments that most powerfully impact revenue?
1. Reform the budget
The first step in budget reformation is to assess the status quo. Sit down with the CFO and look at every vendor and agency contract, every marketing tool in the martech stack and every employee to determine if they have the necessary impact on ROI.
Having a clear spend-management strategy is critical during a downturn. With the right marketing metrics, it’s easier to prove the ROI of marketing investments using real-time data.
2. Build collaborative teams that prove the marketing gestalt
Communication can drive success despite limited budgets. In this time of hybrid and remote team-building, the need for increased efficiency in interactions is crucial. Research by Reclaim.ai finds that the average worker spends 21.5 hours each week in meetings, which is a prohibitively high number.
Structured, regular meeting times with written agendas (rather than casual, agendaless chats) could be a way to reduce wasted time and improve how teams work together.
3. Rely on inexpensive tools
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Cutting needless subscriptions and investing in organizing tools like calendaring and collaboration software can optimize a marketing stack. Inexpensive tools like Google Analytics, Trello and Asana can often do the trick. Small teams don’t need next-generation marketing automation tools quite yet. Experiment with the free platforms. You may be surprised by what they can do.
4. Repurpose great content
Doing more with less is key in this economy. According to Casted’s “The State of the Content Marketer Report,” B2B content marketers spend an average of 33 hours (or around 82% of their work week) on content creation each week. Save on time and money by recycling and revitalizing old content.
For content marketing, think about creating a long whitepaper and then chopping that into snackable blogs, infographics, and podcasts. The same content can be used for short-term gain – as part of a product launch or press release – and for long-term goals, such as establishing an ongoing resource hub.
Budgets are what they are – there’s no way around it. Decrease the pressure on that limited budget by shifting to new strategies and reframing old ones.
“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media.
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