How should businesses effectively leverage marketing resources?
Amidst the strong market fluctuations in recent times, many businesses have been gradually shifting their focus from “investment” to “utilization” of existing resources to cope with upcoming challenges. Among these activities, marketing is an area where the concept of “utilization” can be applied. So, how can businesses effectively utilize their marketing resources to make the most out of them?
Efficiently Utilizing Marketing Activities
Don’t print thousands of brochures (just because other businesses are doing it) without a promotional plan. Don’t keep seeking and building customer relationships and then postpone the advancement of subsequent activities. Don’t just build a blog portfolio on your website with hundreds of articles without utilizing email marketing to help potential customers access valuable information. All of these actions demonstrate that businesses are not effectively utilizing their marketing resources.
Businesses need to utilize their marketing resources by evaluating the Return on Investment (ROI) of their marketing activities. This will help businesses identify which activities are effective to continue developing and which activities are causing waste. As a result, businesses can allocate marketing budgets to improve other aspects of their business.
Avoid Wasting Human Resources
Waste in utilizing marketing resources doesn’t only pertain to misinvestments in projects/campaigns but also exists within the human resources. Having too many individuals involved in marketing activities for a business might not necessarily be a bad thing, but it can lead to inefficiencies. Business leaders and marketing directors need to carefully consider how to optimally utilize marketing personnel based on the business’s scale and the capabilities of the current marketing team.
Alternatively, instead of building an elite marketing team (which incurs significant costs and time), businesses today can opt to hire professional marketing services externally to optimize their marketing budget. When collaborating with an external specialized marketing agency, businesses only need to pay for consultation fees, resource utilization, and budget allocation for campaigns/projects, without additional expenses such as monthly salaries, bonuses, or other social benefits.
Utilizing Marketing Resources through Optimizing Customer Journeys
The customer journey encompasses the entire experience a customer has with a brand, including all interactions across channels, devices, and touchpoints from awareness of the product/service to becoming a loyal customer. This is also a prime environment for businesses to efficiently utilize marketing resources.
The process of reaching customers from being potential customers to becoming loyal ones needs to be optimized. This means reevaluating the approach, handling requests, and building relationships with customers, eliminating activities that don’t bring value to avoid wasting the business’s marketing budget and resources.
Internal Business: Transmitting Information Promptly
Don’t let the process of communicating information within the business go through too many steps and layers. This will quickly diminish the enthusiasm and action of the team. Businesses should utilize marketing resources by establishing a clear and concise internal communication process, enabling quick interaction of requests and ideas for marketing activities, turning them into actions.
Additionally, the marketing team within the business needs to be dynamic, proactive, and always ready for action. Marketing employees who lack dynamism and are always waiting for orders from superiors indicate that the business isn’t effectively utilizing its marketing resources, causing waste.
Leveraging Communication Channels
Email marketing, social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, Zalo OA, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc., are marketing resources that allow businesses to promote their brand, products, and services for free (or at a cost if running ads). While these channels aren’t new in the current era, businesses need a strategic plan for content dissemination across these platforms and allocate content according to each channel in a reasonable manner.
If businesses know how to utilize these marketing resources effectively to cater to customer needs and interests, this can lead to an extremely efficient “zero-dollar marketing” strategy, bringing about high conversions for the business.
Investing in the Right Customer Search Tools
Instead of spending a significant amount on purchasing customer data, which might not necessarily yield real customers for the business, consider seeking customers through workshops, exhibitions, trade shows, using email marketing, employing SEO strategies for the website, utilizing social media channels, etc. These are marketing resources that businesses understand and clearly perceive their target customers, interacting with them directly and promptly.
These are some suggestions for businesses to make the most of their current marketing resources, ensuring that marketing activities are effective and cost-efficient. Businesses need to regularly analyze and eliminate unnecessary resources and activities to avoid wasting their budget.
Moreover, businesses can collaborate with professional marketing agencies like Metta. With a core value of “awakening marketing,” we provide businesses with effective marketing strategies at reasonable costs, helping them optimize their marketing resources. Contact us at marketing@metta.com.vn for consultation.
Metta Marketing
Leading Brand Strategy Consultant