Pivoting your marketing while meeting financial goals

During the Coronavirus crisis so far, we’ve been speaking about customer loyalty and business growth during a downturn which is obviously the first thing that comes to mind in critical situations.

We wanted to shift gears to look at marketing productivity – an area of marketing which is not discussed frequently, yet it is vital to the importance of business functionality because marketing is not only about revenue and growth campaigns but it's also around leadership, people, risk management and profit maximisation.

Question: How can we pivot our marketing while meeting financial goals?

This question goes to actions taken maximise profit margin while minimising risk. This means we can look at taking a productivity focus on the business (alongside sales growth opportunities when things return to “normal”).

There are three types of productivity strategies marketing can look at; enhance product mix, increase prices, and reduce costs.

Specify here the strategy you are recommending for the brand in each target market. State how this relates to the key marketing mix elements relevant to your brand. The actions include:

1. Increase prices. It may pay to trade-off the loss of some customers for higher average returns.
2. Enhance product mix. Instead of simply putting the prices up across the board, a firm can segment the market according to price sensitivity. Then it can target less sensitive segments with upgraded products—this raises the average profits for the company’s product while maintaining existing customers.
3. Reduce costs. Always consider fixed and variable cost. There are a few areas where we can save costs on - people, working dollars and also non-working dollars. Let’s break this down and have a look at how you should approach these to sustain yourself through this period of chaos.

People costs

As your business takes a pivot, you need to ensure you have an expert team to help you navigate. Where possible, do not cut back on your team, because once all of this passes, you will need to re-hire people and there’s going to be an added cost to that. Instead, you may wish to strategically invest in revenue generating staff so that you can have continual cashflow in your business.

Working dollars

This is not the time to scale back your marketing and advertising, rather this is when you should build your future equity. You need to ensure that your working dollars have an ROI - if you scale this back, then you won’t get a return. Instead, channel it to activities where the ROI can be realised in the short, medium and long term.

Non-Working dollars

This is your operating budget and delivery budget. Where possible, delay your production and hold on to your non-working dollars as you may need to redirect them into your working dollars to maintain cashflow.

This is the ideal time to review your productivity strategies and consider how you need to optimise your fixed and variable costs and minimise the impact upon your team.

Many people are facing these questions as well however have not been able to articulate it clearly because they're not sure exactly what questions to ask, and what answer they're seeking.

It is a difficult situation we're facing together, and so it is important that we keep connected, keep in touch, and make sure that we are able to deal with the doubts, fears and uncertainties on what to do next with our businesses.

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Author - Kam Ozonaran

Kam takes an innovative and passionate approach to building marketing capabilities for businesses. 

She has held a successful corporate career and has built successful businesses that have demonstrated her vision and insight across marketing strategy and effective implementation. With keen insight into marketing strategy and implementation, along with an extensive network of industry contacts, Kam is not afraid to dive into unknown waters and pioneer new ways of doing business.

Kam is the Managing Director of Marketing Temps, a marketing recruitment ?rm which is disrupting the industry with an agile approach to connecting businesses with the brightest minds in marketing across Australia.