When I ask about how marketing is budgeted within an organization I find way too often that tradition has more influence then reality. Let me explain.
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Even among some very smart senior marketing pros I often find that their budget allocations fail to adequately fund the most productive sources of new business leads. And I know some very smart CMOs. It’s getting better, but it is slow in coming.
To demonstrate this in presentations I like to use a simple experiment invent by David Meerman Scott. It quickly demonstrates how misaligned most marketing budgets are compared to how people make their buying decisions.
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Now David is the Tom Peters to marketing geeks like me. (You should add his blog Web Ink Now to your reading list if you don’t already.) Like Tom Peters, David is a visionary and a great guy.
He asked a few questions of audiences he spoke to worldwide about how they research products and services they were thinking about buying, recording their response, and got fundamentally the same answers.
He asked,
In last 1 to 2 months, in order to research a product or service you might want to buy, either personally or professionally, have you used….?
Direct mail, phone book, mainstream media, went to a trade show as a non-vendor, Google or other search engine, or asked your online social network (email/Facebook/Twitter) for advice and they sent you a URL you checked.
Here is how his audiences from around the world answered:
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Direct mail ad 2%
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Phone book (Yellow pages) 5%
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Mainstream media (TV, radio, magazines, newspapers) 20%
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Trade Show as a non-vendor 5%
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Google or other search engine ~100%
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Asked your online social network (email/Facebook/Twitter/other) for advice and they sent you a URL you checked 95%
Does your marketing budget reflect this reality?
You can watch Do the new rules of marketing work worldwide? here
About Steve Farnsworth @Steveology
Social media, communications, and content marketing. Strategy and implementation that generate leads, builds customer loyalty and word-of-mouth buzz. Contact 650-331-0594 to see how you can increase your market position and sales.
