Tighter marketing budgets?

Although I disagree with this decision, it does always seem to be marketing budgets that are one of the first cuts to be made by a company when looking how to reduce operating costs and I’m sure these budgets will continue to be reduced for 2010.

However, more brands have started to switch their focus and budgets to direct marketing as opposed to above-the-line, due to its ability to target consumers that are most likely to be converted in to customers. It’s also a cheaper method of marketing compared with huge media campaigns and also more measurable in terms of calculating ROI’s.

I just hope that clients aren’t going to come to me and ask for cheaper campaigns but expect the same result from the campaign as previous orders that had bigger budgets spent on them. As so many people point out in this industry; you really do get what you pay for and I believe that, it's now during one of the worst economical years ever in the UK that companies should actually be using direct marketing more than ever. Granted they need to work more smartly with regards to budgets than ever before and run deeper customer analysis in order to ensure they are targeting the correct audience but I don’t think companies should be cutting down on marketing as a whole but actually increasing it and looking more at the long term angle of the brand.

Tags:  marketing marketing budget