How Is Your Marketing Department Dealing With Cutbacks?

We've all been told that 2011 is set to a tough year on the rocky road back to recovery and the predictions would appear to be true if the latest data on marketing budgets is anything to go by.

According to a recent IPA/BDO Bellwether survey marketing budgets have dropped by 5.4% ahead of 2011, coming off the back of a cautiously optimistic rise at the start of 2010. So what will that mean for marketing activities, advertising and corporate gifts over the year to come?

Oddly, whenever there is an economic downturn it always seems to be the marketing and sales budgets that are the first to be slashed, even though these are the very departments that will be charged with gaining the vital leads needed to help the company through the hard times.

With a weakened budget it is easy to think that quality and quantity of output will drastically decrease, but the overall effect may well more positive than expected.
What can often happen when budgets are constrained is that a lot of the expensive but less effective marketing streams are abandoned in favour of more successful methods that deliver a better ROI.

Marketing bosses and staff are forced to think of more innovative ways of marketing their brand and gaining visibility in ways that won't break the bank, so new ideas are often implemented in a way that will look to save the company money.

So which marketing avenues should your company keep and where else should you look to market your brand while keeping an eye on the budget?

TV Advertising

Despite taking a battering over the last few years, TV advertising has gone through something of a revival recently, with programmes such as the X-Factor drawing in record numbers of viewers and the new "viral" aspect to some adverts attracting a lot of attention. If you are lucky enough to be able to afford to go down the TV route, a clever and witty advert can still have the power to market your brand effectively, so even in the digital age it should not be discounted.

Corporate Gifts

This is marketing with the personal touch and it is still a popular and effective way of showing your best clients and hottest prospects that they have your attention. Getting your brand in front of the right person is always a challenge and corporate gifts can show your brand off in the best possible light.

Brand consistent corporate gifts can be used to get your core message across while also providing your recipients with the unique feeling that receiving a gift brings. Even if your budget has taken a knock, corporate gifts are still a crucial way of keeping your best clients onside and getting the attention of those prospects that count.

Online Marketing

This field of marketing has continued growing year on year as the potential of online marketing has been fully understood. You Tube has provided a great portal for free advertising to appear whilst social networks and search engine optimisation (SEO) have provided effective ways of getting new leads. This has proven to be a very effective way of marketing a brand and a company and has become a must for every marketing department.

Newspaper Advertising

As online marketing grows the opposite is happening to advertising through newspapers. Circulation numbers across the majority of major newspapers are dropping as people turn their attentions online and the high cost of placing a newspaper ad is proving to be discouraging to most businesses. With marketing budgets decreasing and new marketing avenues opening up all the time in the digital world, it might be time to drop the newspaper ads and focus on getting press attention through PR instead.

It promises to be a tough year for all departments, but a reduction in budget could be a good opportunity to audit your current activities and find new, more effective avenues in which to operate.