Simple Economics

The Stock Market is in freefall, Consumer Confidence is low, House Prices are falling, Inflation rising, Marketing Budgets are being cut………..

Now tell me the odd one out?

Yep you guessed it, Marketing Budgets being cut. In an Economic downturn one of the first budgets to be cut (after Overtime) is marketing. Now has anyone spotted the mistake here? That’s right, if we want to increase market share, sales and ultimately profits we need to actually market ourselves more in a downturn thereby strengthening our position against that of our competitors who are not marketing themselves effectively. Perhaps we should look at the tangible side of marketing such as promotional merchandise, this way we can clearly see who we are strategically targeting. Of course a further alternative is to utilise a Gift with Order or an On Pack offer, this is where you up sell using the promotional merchandise as a ‘carrot’. There are many ways of ‘skinning a cat’ and we can go into greater detail or discussion if you wish to contact me directly on email simon@merchandisemania.co.uk.

The second part to this instalment is about budgeting. Now I don’t want to patronise anyone with this next statement, but effective budgeting is the one of the important key skills of the business world. I say skill, because the way finance teams are cutting budgets each of us is going from ‘Tesco Finest’ to ‘Tesco Value’ in terms of our marketing spend. How can we make the £££’s go further? If we liken the Tesco Products to Promotional Merchandise, there are many ways of making those £££’s go further. What we need from you are the number! The number of items you would like and the number you have in your budget to pay for it? Once we have this we should be able to come up with many different ideas and ways of using your numbers to satisfy your needs. Give us a challenge; I am sure we will come through for you!

Remember, the pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity; the optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.