Strengthen Marketing Administration to Get More Bang for Your Buck (Part One)

Like many business-to-business enterprises, you probably spend 1% to 3% of your revenue on marketing activities. That's a lot of dough, and, at some point, someone's going to ask: “Is this money well spent?” There is a pretty good chance the following answers won't cut it:

  • "Our new catalog shows every product we make in great detail!"
  • "We won an award at last month's advertising banquet!"

While measuring effectiveness of marketing activities can be a nebulous and sometimes costly task, there are simple ways to ensure maximum usefulness of some of the most basic marketing tools.

Literature – improve access and get control

Some B2B enterprises spend more than 50% of their marketing budget on printed literature. Most of the focus goes into ensuring the creative design and messaging are perfect. Why not put equal effort into making sure people can get it? After all, if literature doesn't end up in front of your prospects and customers, it's no good to anyone. If you have a large sales and distribution network, consider providingthem a Web-based storefront where they can order and download literature 24/7. Don't inhibit the sales process by hiding literature stocks behind invisible barriers like out-of-date fax request forms.

And while you're at it, get control of this monster budget item. The best literature systems keep track of who uses literature and how much they use. Controlling usage keeps sales reps and distributors from ordering more than they need and makes sure usage is commensurate with performance. Usage control can result in huge reprint savings since wasteful habits of over-ordering and stockpiling can be mitigated.

You should also make sure your system gives you the ability to view inventory levels and forecast reprints so you never run out of a critical brochure. By analyzing usage data and inventory levels you'll be able to:

  • Ensure there is enough time for revisions before printing; you'll never be out of critical brochures and they will always be up-to-date
  • Eliminate the need for emergency reprints – a costly practice that runs up printing bills
  • Determine economical print quantities and methods; choose commercial printing, digital offset or on-demand printing depending on what makes sense for your usage needs
  • Stop printing low usage items; make low usage items available only via download and get rid of costly, low-run print jobs altogether

Many companies have saved more than 30% on their printing expenditures by paying attention to details like these.

Okay. Let's look at those answers to the question: “Is our marketing budget money well spent?”

  • "Over 200 different sales reps ordered literature last year. We limited usage with 15 of our distributors since their sales didn't align with their requests."
  • "We converted 20 items to download only since usage last year didn't warrant reprinting them. That saved us about $35,000."

Sound better?