The Perennial Question
When times are tough, everyone has to look at their income and expenditure and ensure that they can make ends meet.
Having spent a lot of my time pouring over spreadsheets, forecasting income and expenditure, I do know how very difficult it can be gazing into the future and weighing up the odds on each income and expenditure line.
I have to say, though, that in all my years of maintaining Cashflow and P&L forecasts, I have never known a more difficult time.
Because of the Covid pandemic businesses were already financially weakened, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine only made things much, much worse.
Now we are all having to try to forecast several expenditure lines as well as sales income lines.
Consequently, we are asking the perennial question, “should we spend money on marketing or batten down the hatches and wait for it to get better?”.
Here are my thoughts on that – you should always press forward.
I work on the principle that if one does nothing there is only one way that the business can go – down because if you lose an existing client there is nothing to replace that income stream.
If you agree with me, then it is a simple matter of deciding what marketing process fits your limited purse best.
Firstly, it is always better to have a steady stream of marketing rather than one big bang. If you spend your meagre budget all in one go and the target and focus was wrong then you’ve got nothing left to play with.
It is better to have a steady trickle campaign that you can tweak from time to time, so that you are always, week in week out, pushing forwards and keeping your business name out there.
What are the options?
Before Covid, when everyone worked in offices, I would have wholeheartedly recommended a low-cost 2½ hours per week telemarketing campaign, because there is nothing more powerful than one person talking to another directly. That’s still a possibility if you have a list of contacts to call, of course.
However, now that people seem to spend their working lives alternating between office and home, telemarketing is much more difficult. It is bound to be slower and therefore has a lower ratio of success to marketing cost than it had before.
That is why a new technique has been developed using digital marketing (LinkedIn) messaging and then telephone conversations.
This is how it works.
A target market and the appropriate contacts are selected on LinkedIn Navigator. (Navigator does cost you a fee each month but it’s worth it.)
A short message is composed and then sent to each contact introducing the business and the services.
Usually, between 20 to 30% will express an interest by Linking up.
Those contacts are then sent a follow-up message inviting them to have a conversation.
After about a week or two each one who hasn’t called receives a telephone call to see if we can discuss what they need and when.
Then at the appropriate time, they receive another call to proceed to the next level.
It’s a long process but once the ball is rolling it gathers momentum and yields results. It is certainly better than doing nothing.
If money is really tight, this is a process you can do yourself, and we will be happy to help you get started with pointers and advice if you call us.
Otherwise, we will be happy to do it for you.
Just call 0808-172-1900