But everyone in the marketing community knows that those companies that sustain their advertising spend in a tough economic climate are best placed to emerge stronger.
The key to survival is to maintain as much visibility as possible, by making the budget work as hard as possible. Marketing managers need to find ways to improve the ROI on their marketing spend and reduce the cost of identifying new sales leads.
Direct marketing has traditionally been one of the sectors in marketing that has flourished when budgets are tight. The direct correlation between marketing expenditure and sales makes it a much more attractive option than, say, image or brand advertising. Yet some forms of direct marketing do have relatively high threshold costs, which can put it beyond the reach of companies when budgets have been slashed.
Let's consider this further. Too often organisations feel that they have to market "solus" in order to be effective. While it may maximise attention and be good for the image, it can be very costly.
Furthermore, when you consider that doormats in today's households, filled with mail from a variety of organisations, are hardly a solus environment, it makes you wonder if paying for a solus mailing is really the best use of marketing budget or whether it will guarantee superior results.
Companies really need to be more willing to try a variety of media and be more inventive in finding cost-effective ways to find qualified prospects.
Collaborative marketing is a technique which is increasing in popularity with advertisers across a whole range of sectors.
Put simply, collaborative marketing is multicompany, multibrand collaboration with a cross section of other compatible products and services that are trying to reach a similar consumer audience. It includes channels such as card decks, joint inserts, multibrand response catalogues, multiadvertiser door drops, coupon books and the like.
For companies who need to find new and reliable sources of qualified leads, collaborative marketing offers a low-cost, low-risk way of testing them with well targeted distribution methods. The costs of data, print, collating, wrapping, personalisation and postage, are shared, taking out much of the risk factor and enabling companies to reach a much wider prospect pool for a fraction of the cost of a solus mailing.
Whereas a solus mailing costs an average 45p per item, a card in a card deck costs around 4p. Sure, response will be probably be less, but not a tenth... and advertisers can reap the benefit of the opportunity to reach say, 400,000 targets.
Some companies might shy away from collaboration on the basis that it has a negative effect on "the brand". So let's think this through. There are many companies with a common audience that are not competitive, so why not share the cost? No one objects to reading a newspaper containing a hundred different ads, or being sandwiched between other advertisers on a broadcast media spot. Marketing managers are often happy to take part in omnibus research, data swaps and data pooling, so what's the difference?
Based on past experience, many collaborative marketing media owners are able to fairly accurately predict the number of responses a given advertisement will achieve. This can assist companies in planning a lead generation programme to suits their demands, whether they require leads all year round, or whether their product is more seasonal. It can be used to complement existing solus mailings, and to back up other above the line activity within an integrated campaign.
A well conceived and implemented fulfillment programme will prove the value of the leads, and a relationship with the consumer can be developed quickly.
Finding new prospects and new customers cost effectively is the key driver for many companies. Collaboration is one way to achieve that aim.
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