This one goes to all the marketers who have the pleasure of working with no marketing budget. Never heard of that kind of setup? Well keep on reading...
For years, I have worked with no set marketing budget. Now, many marketers might say that I’m not the real marketer, others might say that I was lucky. I’d prefer to think I’m the second one. Of course I could tell you how much my marketing department was spending per year, I just didn't have to put a number at the beginning of the year that I needed to stick to. Don't get me wrong, that wasn't necessary my choice but I managed not only to work around it but also find some positives. Oh, and before you get a feeling that all the companies I worked for were a bunch of Scrooge’s, they really weren't, I’d rather think of them as “revenue-orientated”.
The reason was simple - you spend just as much as you REALLY need to spend.
Here are some benefits:
You start to think creatively. Once you know that you need to justify nearly every spend, you start to find ways to safe yourself the hassle. And that works an absolute magic! You start to find solutions to your challenges that you wouldn’t find before. Different and more cost-effective.
You learn a lot! By either looking for alternative solutions or just starting do things yourself, you learn enormously. Just a few skills I learned whilst trying to save money: graphic design, video production and post-production, SEO, content creation, account based marketing... The list goes on and on. Basically a lot of things that are often outsourced by many marketing teams.
You generally end up spending less. Your return on marketing investment will be on its highest! By questioning which activities are truly worth the £££, you’re not just doing all the above, but also saving your company those (sometimes big!) pennies. Also, teams tend to spend what they have been given, mainly out of fear to get less to spend next year.
By this point, I can feel a few virtual stones flying my direction. Before you grab the next one though, try this approach first, it might work magic for you.