Is it winter hibernation?
Political uncertainty?
Too many public holidays?
Or is it just a lack of marketing efforts?
There are a few factors that are being blamed for a decrease in business over the last few months.
At Metis we’ve also noticed a decrease in sales over the last 60 days. This has sparked loads of conversations with clients, friends, suppliers, partners, the shop assistant at Canal Walk & the bartender at Tigers Milk. All the conversations have started with “How’s Business?”. All the responses generally consisted of:
- big sighs
- an eish
- a phew
- and the phrase “it’s tough out there”.
Relatable?
Yeah, we thought so.
What we’ve also noticed is that there are two very different approaches to how the company looks to solve the challenge:
- They are looking to cut their EXPENSES and have reduced all their spend on marketing.
- They are looking to INVEST more into their marketing efforts.
What struck us was the different language used to describe marketing. While some people referred to marketing as an EXPENSE, others referred to it as an INVESTMENT.
- An EXPENSE is something that you buy and it depreciates over time.
- An INVESTMENT is an item that is purchased to generate income or appreciate in the future.
So why do companies think so differently?
- There is no ROI (Return On Investment) being tracked on their marketing efforts.
- The only metric being measured is DIRECT SALES while a long-term strategy is not being considered.
- Data is not being translated into valuable, actionable insights for the company.
- The marketing is all driven to the bottom of the sales funnel. To be effective marketing needs to consider all phases of the sales funnel: Awareness, Consideration, Conversion, Retention.
With that being said, we’d love to know how your company views marketing? Do you think it’s more of an EXPENSE or an INVESTMENT?
