That’s One Way to Do It.

A friend on Facebook posted this crazy looking image and it made me think about a few things.

1) Construction & Engineering can accomplish just about anything including a bridge that moves drivers from driving on the left side to driving on the right side of the road.

2) For every task, there is more than one way to do things. This goes for your work life, personal life, and defiantly in marketing. I remember taking my CPSM exam (Certified Professional Services Marketer), we were asked to choose the best answer, not necessarily the only right answer.

When we devise a marketing strategy for our clients, we never put all of our eggs in one basket. Even if a marketing avenue has been a winner for years, we never want to put all of our time & money into that because one day it will dry up. Each year, we use about 10-20% of the budget for new, experimental pieces and the rest is split up over proven elements. Usually that 10-20% comes from what did not work the previous year. Many times when we take over a marketing budget, there is at least 40% of wasted money because the owner or business developer does not look at the budget objectively. After years of working a marketing budget, many clients use the same marketing avenue for sentimental reasons, because its easy (or lazy way), or they like the sales person. For example, how many people are still spending thousands of dollars a month in phone books? Does it still pull it’s weight for the high cost?

When you’re reviewing this year’s marketing budget in preparation for creating next year’s budget, review each element individually and do not assume something is working because you’ve always done it. Try to find out how your clients find you. Two years ago, we  made a list of our top 25 clients company wide and surprisingly over one-third of them came from the phone book and the rest from our website and networking/word-of-mouth. Of the clients that came from client referrals, many of the clients that referred us actually came from the phone book. Therefore, we still have a small presence in the local phone book for our parent company, Design the Planet. For us, the phone book does not provide the A/E/C calls that we need, but being listed in the ABC chapter directory does have it’s benefits.

Think objectively not passionately about your marketing budget.