I once saw Sudeep Gohil of W+K and Droga5 fame say that it was much easier to market when you have big budgets at your disposal because small budgets have no margin for error. He then went on to talk about working on Nike's $500 million budget and described $3 million as small. He was talking in Adelaide and there were chuckles from the audience, I don't think he got the irony of $3 million being a massive budget in that town.
He's right of course. The smaller the budget, the smaller the margin for error, to a point where a Marketing Manager can be forgiven for decision paralysis. One of the most common complaints I hear from Marketing Managers is that they have just enough budget to do 70% of the job that they need to do.
Marketing with a small budget makes it very difficult to get any kind of traction with your target audience so you have to be both creative and brave.
Objectives.
When your budget is tight, your objectives are crucial. What is the most important, visible, strategic plan related KPI that you can impact? Is it sales, awareness, salience? What KPI is linked to your next review?
Manditories.
What do you absolutely have to do? What are the non-negotiables that soak up time and budget? There's plenty that can be achieved in the cheap and dirty digital world to drive traffic to your online assets that can free up budget for brand building activity. The easy wins are with Google+, online directories, templated websites, simple SEO and social media. This is where good advice and a digital audit counts.
The big hit.
With small budgets the key is to do one thing, and do it superbly. It's not really important what the media channel is, it's the quality of the communication that makes the difference between success and failure. Nothing damages a brand faster than poor comms. A cheap TVC, a cluttered outdoor campaign or a lame activation that motivates no-one. Messaging is everything.
Do less, do it better.
It's tough when you have no budget. The inclination is to go with visibility but the reality is, the best use of your available dollars is in getting Clarity in messaging first.
