In a crisis, companies tend to follow predictable patterns. We can imagine the panicked stereotype, railing through the halls, arms waving, calling for budget cuts, lay-offs and the end of free snacks in the coffee room. The general purposes of business, minimizing expenses and maximizing revenue, zoom into focus as something like emergencies, and it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture. It’s easy to start slashing things.
Marketing departments invariably hear that they need to cut their budgets, but only rarely get guidance about how to cut it or what to sacrifice. Too many companies view marketing as a cost center, rather than as a profit center. Advertising, trade shows, even sales support … we can do without these things, right? Halve the marketing budget! Do away with it altogether! (Furrowed brow, dismissive waving of hands, pounding of fists on the table.)
If money has to be cut, it has to be cut. That’s what a crisis is. We’re not thinking about a company that has spent money on marketing just for the sake of spending it. Still, we want to be very mindful about really understanding the gives and takes of everything we’re doing. We want, instead of pulling our hair out or acting rashly, to go through the problem-solving in a very informed, non-reactionary way and to understand the implications of everything we might do.
We have to ask ourselves, what’s the risk in cutting marketing? Probably there are some spends that we’ve already committed to, and others that are more flexible. Cutting marketing means cutting brand awareness, engagement, basically all our inbound lead generation. Our pipeline suffers, and so does the influx of new customers, new interests, new learnings, new awareness, new product launches, any acceleration efforts. So, with these potential trade-offs in mind, what can we do or decide not to do now? How can we plan to recoup any sacrifices we have to make, later, when this crisis ends?
Advertising and public relations, these big numbers can seem easy to cut. As part of an assessment and optimization of a marketing budget, Elohi might encourage you to examine your market situation.
For instance, if you have distribution to half of the country, maybe narrowing your marketing focus to that half of the country makes sense. Instead of a broadcast ad, can you use more targeted marketing, spend less, and get more back? If we know that you’re already in stock with distributors in a particular area, then let’s get the best terms there and expand later. By prioritizing and thinking about what’s going to convert the most sales now, we can cut costs and bring in revenue without mortgaging the future.
Supporting sales helps preserve the critical top line, but Elohi would encourage you to reanalyze what each part of the spending gets you. How might we reduce cost on sell sheets, for example? We could use a full-service advertising agency or designer, as the most expensive option, which might make sense in the best of times. In a marketing analysis, though, we would consider other, more economical options:
- We could have the sell sheets done by someone on the marketing team, by a person whose salary we’re already paying. If we chose this option, how could that person’s workload get shifted or shuffled, to allow for the additional tasks?
- Even billion-dollar companies don’t necessarily have a high threshold for acceptability, could we get by with good-enough instead of world-class, so we’re still getting it done and moving forward?
- Perhaps someone on staff could gather things up in-house and send them to a designer or graphic artist to polish them up or make them look pretty. Instead of outsourcing the whole project, we might do what we can in-house and calling in specialists for smaller portions of the project.
- We might choose to have a graphic design agency make changes to materials we already have; at a fraction of the fees a full-service advertising agency would charge.
- Elohi might drop in marketing services or staff at a lower cost than having those things done by a full-service agency. Our resources and expertise allow us to get maximum results, efficiently, with the lowest possible spend.
Ultimately, we want to support the sales team with whatever materials they need to get the job done, in the short term and the long term. And we want to do make sure we look and weigh the costs responsibly.
Similarly, when we think about trade shows, there are ways still to be there, but to be there with a more economical presence. Eliminating trade shows altogether sends the wrong message to the industry, and particularly to your segments, about your product. If we think about multiple points of contact before a potential customer converts in some way, whether that’s snapping your QR code at a booth or clicking to sign up for your newsletter or placing an order, we don’t want to eliminate trade shows, where we can contact so many people in person.
How can we be at a show, be at the National Restaurant Association, for instance, but be there for half the spend that we had last year? What would that look like? We can still look professional, be seen and recognized and able to communicate with others across the industry.
In our trade show consulting and management, Elohi can tell you where you need to make improvements, recommend improvements that fit your budget, or make the improvements for you. Rather than pulling back from trade shows, downsize. Reassess, reevaluate. How do you show up? How do you pre-market? How do you get the most out of trade shows in general? Don’t just throw the baby out with the bathwater. Elohi can help figure out how trade shows can continue to help you make your way in the market, as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible.
In general, when things begin to look bleak, whether because of a downturn in the economy, geopolitical turmoil effecting the supply chain, rising labor and logistics costs, or whatever, calm, circumspect evaluation and planning save the day. Rather than slashing things, optimize. Scale back, refocus. Bring some things in house, maybe do some things differently, push some spends to next year or to a different quarter.
- Can you do some of the same things you’ve been doing, but with different payment structures?
- Can you push money from one program to another or scale things or change resources?
- Is there a cheaper way to get nearly the same thing?
- Or a more cost-efficient way in the short term to go about getting it, before you come back to it later, when things right themselves?
- Is there a change in strategy?
- Is everything absolutely, positively working perfectly?
- Where can you tighten your belt now that won’t hurt you a year or two or three years out?
Elohi can help you plan for the long term, for sustainability, and plan your way through a crisis with a view to its other side. That way we can help keep you on the path, because particularly if you’re a startup or new to foodservice, what you don’t want to do is derail yourself and stop your momentum.
For a lot of small companies, it makes sense to hire us, with decades of experience in foodservice marketing, rather than to try to figure out marketing in a crisis. Even $100m companies might have a marketing manager with five years of experience, none of them in foodservice. Is that person really the best-equipped to make long-term strategic decisions? We’re foodservice veterans who know the ins and outs of the industry, with deep resources of knowledge. Having owned businesses and worked at companies of all sizes, we can pull the right levers and help everyone stay very focused on driving sales, rather than marketing for marketing’s sake. This crisis, any crisis, can be the time to right-size and to build the priorities and procedures that lead your company to long-term success.