Marketing Budget Slashed? Time to get creative!

It's a fact that in the current business climate marketing budgets are getting slashed left and right. But there are two things one can do. Either complain, panic, fret, and ultimately just do less of what you usually do, or find creative new ways to market.

At one of my former employers, a reduced budget was a cause for panic. Whatever to do!? Rather than send a direct mail letter twice a month to every household in the state, they only send to 80% of the households. Rather than run an ad in the Sunday paper every weekend, they would run them only two weekends. Etc. etc. with all of the traditional marketing. And what happens? Overall response go down, they struggle to make their numbers, and then they ask for more money to send more mail. There are no thoughts about how to reach customers in a different way (and I'm not even touching on newspaper advertising in this post).

The current climate allows a marketer to explore so many different delivery vehicles, and be creative in how to reach a customer. Blogs, Facebook and even Twitter allow you a way to update your customers on what is going on at little to know costs. Podcasts are a unique and inexpensive way to provide short presentations to your customers and clients (by the way both of these can work for B2B and B2C businesses of all sizes). Limited budgets force marketers to be more targeted with messages in an effort to go after those potential customers that can buy. Messages need to be more tailored, more specific, and more unique.

Overall, I think that one of the best things to come out of this down turn will be a different type of marketing. A creative marketing, a more targeted marketing in general. Marketers have less money to get people that have less money to spend it. Those that are successful will really stand apart once we get through this downturn and move to the next profitable cycle.

Those marketers that throw up their hands and simply do less are missing a golden opportunity to try new and creative approaches.