Fear and Marketing

WOW! We don’t have to go very far these days to see information pointing to the fact that many people and companies have fallen into the trap of fear-based decision-making. Unfortunately, it’s especially true in marketing departments around the world.

The CEOs I interview tell us that the number-one reason they are cutting their marketing budgets or even eliminating them is because they are afraid of:

1. Losing their job. i.e., ”If I invest in my marketing and advertising and it doesn’t work, it’s my job.”
2. Being wrong. “We have so little money to invest this year, what happens if it doesn’t work?”
3. Failure! “How do I know that I shouldn’t use the money differently to get better success?”

When the news is bad all around us, that’s the time to second-guess the under-confidences and self-doubts we have. We need to market smart and hard when business turns down or the economy and customer confidence are waning. We know that cutting the marketing budget is not the smart way to go, but we do it anyway because we’re afraid and we don’t have the data to back up our plans in the CFO’s office.

That’s where ROI-based strategies come to the rescue. It’s not about stopping your marketing efforts, it’s about investing smart, monitoring the results and redeploying in areas that work the best. This is a great time to partner with professionals and agencies that have that mindset and report on results that are meaningful to you, the CEO or CFO. What are some great metrics? Numbers of new customers, dollars of new sales, dollars per customer and customers retained.

One of the concepts that I put out there to help guide our business and budgeting decisions is ”We are willing to invest in growth, but we are unwilling to invest in covering losses.” Consequently, our money is going to marketing and advertising efforts that support existing customers, sales efforts and underscore our ability to be creative and think about new ways to grow our clients’ businesses.

There’s an old saying (although some financial gurus might disagree with it today): “Numbers don’t lie.” The point is that you can overcome fear and build confidence by investing in marketing efforts that will impact the same operational metrics that you are measured on and then track results. That will get everyone’s attention—and support for upcoming budget discussions.

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Tags: Direct Marketing, marketing metrics, return on investment marketing, roi