I was perplexed. I’d just taken over as a marketing manager in the automotive industry and was querying a large marketing spend. The company had been advertising – at huge cost – in a national Sunday newspaper every week but it was clear from analytics that no leads or sales were coming from this medium.
“All our competitors also advertise in it,” was the reasoning behind it. I pulled the ads and moved it into digital, where sales conversions were robust. Within weeks, all the competitors had stopped advertising in the paper too. Over the years, I’ve seen many instances where clients have allocated large marketing budgets to media for no reason other than they always have done. Indeed, even if the spend is worthwhile it is often neglected and left to run independent of any analysis or amendments. While undertaking a marketing audit recently, I noticed a potential client had not logged into their Google Ads account in over a year, despite spending a considerable amount on a monthly basis.
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has garnered much controversy of late, but it’s not a new phenomenon. After the financial crash in 2008, the Irish Government introduced an advisory committee dubbed ‘An Bord Snip Nua’. The group found €5.3 billion of savings, including 17,300 public service job cuts.
Do you know how efficient your marketing spend currently is? How often does your company undertake a review of your marketing spend? And should you introduce your own version of DOGE to drill down into marketing spend?
Creating a marketing budget that effectively allocates resources is crucial for any business. Marketing is often seen as an expense rather than an investment, leading to underfunding or a misallocation of resources. By isolating marketing expenditures, companies can more easily track the return on investment of their marketing initiatives, making it easier to assess what works and what doesn’t. This data-driven approach enables businesses to allocate resources to the most effective strategies, increasing overall profitability.
Keeping a close eye on marketing expenditures helps companies to maintain budget control, as without proper monitoring spending can quickly spiral out of control. Companies can avoid overspending by regularly reviewing budgets and adjusting plans based on performance metrics and changing marketing conditions.
Establishing a system for monitoring marketing spend fosters accountability within the marketing team. When budgets are transparent and expenditures are tracked, and expenditures are tracked, team members are more likely to take ownership of marketing of projects and initiatives and be mindful of costs.
Before monitoring marketing spend, it’s crucial to establish clear objectives. Defining what success looks like for each campaign is critical – whether it’s driving leads, increasing sales or enhancing brand awareness. For example, in the aforementioned automotive company a marketing budget of €100 was allocated to each car sale. So, if we spent €10,000 on a particular medium and it didn’t result in 100 sales, it would be deemed unsuccessful and continued spend on it would be reevaluated.
In short, monitoring marketing spend is not just about keeping costs in check – it’s about maximising the effectiveness of marketing initiatives and driving growth. Please get in touch at [email protected] if you’d like us to undertake a marketing budget audit for your company to determine what is working and, just as critically, what isn’t.