Every annual business review has a section where you will be asked to present a budget for your marketing activities for the next year.
Most teams approach this with some fear because budget setting is a laborious exercise fraught with complex options:
- Should you spend more in the first half or the second?
- Should you spend more on performance marketing or brand marketing?
- Should you do a national-level campaign or stick to BTL?
- Should you invest in influencer campaigns or hire a brand ambassador?
The questions are never-ending.
It’s true – a lot of these high-level questions are difficult to answer in isolation.
But there is a simpler approach.
You can run several low-cost experiments with a portion of your current marketing budget.
Prove out concepts by running city/state-level campaigns before you go national.
A single idea can have a large version and a small version.
Before you ask for several crores for a national campaign, shoot a low-cost video this year and test it out in one state first.
By testing out small ideas, you will:
- Learn what works and can be scaled up
- Learn what doesn’t work and should be discarded
- Gain valuable consumer feedback and insights through testing
- Establish conviction in the leadership team about marketing ideas
When it’s time for you to plan the budget for the next year, spend on what works while scaling back / stopping activities that don’t work.
