Survival without marketing activities?

One needs to agree that current economic situation is not very supportive of marketing activities or spend and almost all the local / international brands have cut down their marketing budgets however the real question is based upon survival of your brands or revenue forecast without marketing activities or brand communication. It’s usually an ongoing battle between marketers and rest of the management specially people from finance, when it comes to sales forecast vs. budget that needs to be spent, business leaders are usually hesitant of spending money on marketing but at the same time they expect sales targets and brand building goals to be delivered.

As a marketer and a business unit head I strongly believe that marketing has never been given its due credit, specially being the only medium that drives footfall, customer trial, brand awareness and positive word of mouth for any brand. Of course the current economic situations, tax implications and customer’s purchase power being weakened cannot be denied BUT that doesn’t mean marketing activities need to be halted. People would have different opinion regarding this but the more case studies you go through, you will see a pattern that in days of despair and continuous decline, companies have always chosen to accelerate their sales and marketing activities and it ALWAYS work. Businessmen need to come out of their own peer pressure where they see their fellow businessmen putting budget cuts and tend to feel obliged to the same in their own companies regardless of accessing the situation first.

In recent times two of the brands in Fashion (Gul Ahmed) and Edible Oil (Dastak Cooking Oils) industry have shown some very tremendously aggressive marketing styles. Gul Ahmed is one of the pioneer brands whereas Dastak is a new entrant and yet they have decided a very clear strategy of not letting any of their competition take their market share but have also made sure to make other brands look at their strategy again. Will this results into sales and revenue? Most definitely YES!

We can argue for years on this topic but any basic sense of business will only tell you that if you want to increase your revenue, achieve targets, build brands and keep yourself alive in the market, you have to focus on your marketing efforts CONSISTENTLY, either slow and steady or aggressive, the decision is yours and only you will not only benefit from it in the short term but will gain momentum in the longer run as well.