Cut the marketing budget, 1 week AIDA, and Quiz with Anant Rangaswami

Have you had that chat yet? The one that goes, “I believe in marketing, but we really have to chop your budget”. Or, the more trendy, “Let’s cut out everything except performance marketing”. And you tried to argue that in the long run, defunding the brand will reduce sales. That’s true, but right now the focus is on surviving the short run not the long run, in which case the brand can do exactly what it is intended to do – help you in lean times.

Here’s how it works. AIDA (Awareness-Interest-Desire-Action) is a classical model that describes the cognitive stages in the path-to-purchase. Typically Awareness is the most expensive because it also reaches out to the most number of people as it is the top of the funnel. Mass marketing channels are used for Awareness and that is of course more expensive than the custom channels. There are two reasons that in the short-term your awareness budget can be reduced (1) given previous marketing efforts there should be some residual impact of brand awareness (and awareness) for 3 to 6 months or even more depending on the clutter and importance of your category (2) the market of the ready-to-buy has shrunk and hence you can reduce your outreach proportionately to reach those with higher propensity to buy.

But what if you haven’t invested in awareness in the last 6 months? That’s a bit unlucky, but not an insurmountable problem if you have good credibility points. You can package that into your non-mass media outreach programs and start showing results within a week! Advit Sahdev shows you how you can get people to buy real estate in 9 steps in a week by condensing the AIDA progression. This method can work across industries and as companies feel (temporarily) queasy about mass media and physical campaigns are off limits, it is going to be the way forward for many brands. In most cases given the business priorities of liquidity and solvency you will have to switch tactics and you may as well do it with good grace!

At Sanjay Kadaveru’s invitation, I conducted a webinar on marketing for AISEA’s social entrepreneurs. Whether your goal is maximizing profits or maximizing adoption for the greater good, the principles of marketing do not change. In fact in a subsequent conversation I argued that even giving something away for free is not a sure way to success – because I may question the value or quality of the product simply because it is free. And while “vocalforlocal” is certainly gaining momentum we have deepset notions of country superiority of certain categories which are not going to be dislodged overnight. Here’s a 2 minute crash course of the one-hour long webinar. If you’re interested in knowing the multiple levers open to build your narrative do consider reading this article on Core Vs Surrounding.

Many of you have enjoyed our quizzes and this week we are upping the ante – we are privileged to have Anant Rangaswami, Editor Melt, as our Guest Quizmaster. Previously, he has been the editor of Storyboard on CNBC TV18, founding editor of Campaign India and senior editor at Firstpost.com and is the author of two books on advertising. The quiz is a lot of fun, though I think I wouldn’t have scored so well without access to the answers :). Take the Quiz, now! And mail me back your scores – yes, hitting reply will reach me – this is really my id not a bot.

I’m enjoying the lockdown-provided access to so many great speakers and it is a fantastic opportunity to refresh and relearn. Tomorrow ie Friday at 11.30am IST I’m hosting a Facebook Watch Party for Jaspreet Bindra’s talk on the Future of Work at https://www.facebook.com/groups/cmoindia/ Grab a coffee (or your favourite drink in a coffee mug) and hangout.