By: Julie Price

When acclaimed marketing guru Arlene Dickinson advises businesspeople, “Don’t slash your marketing budget!” that’s not self-serving hyperbole.

The president and CEO of Calgary-based Venture Communications and a well-known Canadian TV personality, Dickinson uses this marketing mantra to express to businesspeople the fiscal wisdom, if not necessity, of creating a public brand message.

“No. 1 is, make sure your message is well expressed so that it’s easily understood,” she told a recent gathering of several hundred businesspeople. “No. 2 is, make sure you say it repetitively.”

The reason should be obvious: “When you disappear from the marketplace,” Dickinson said, “you disappear from people’s minds.”

This is true always but particularly during economic downturns. According to Dickinson, companies that increased their marketing spending during the recession saw 5.1 percent higher increases in profitability during the recovery than those that decided to cut, and they also gained a higher increase in market share – almost three times higher than companies that cut their marketing budgets.

At The Goddard Company, we know these things absolutely if only anecdotally: Our clients with consistent marketing budgets virtually always outpace their competitors. In our many years of experience, we’ve watched company after company that marketed regularly and consistently outpace those that do little or no marketing – and the difference has been significant.

Define ‘marketing budget’

Depending on the industry, businesses generally earmark from their budgets anywhere from 4 percent (for energy companies) to 24 percent (for consumer packaged goods) for marketing, with the average in the 11.6 percent range, according to the Wall Street Journal.

These days, the bulk of marketing expenses tends to go to internet strategies in addition to personnel costs. With everything from social media to SEO (search engine optimization) dominating many marketing budgets, we also maintain that good old-fashioned publicity is both cost-effective and generally effective.

While we do help our clients with broad-based web services including blog posts, e-newsletters and social media marketing, we also encourage them to utilize the most basic marketing tools, such as making public appearances and offering newsworthy incentive programs, products and services.

With our help, keeping business names out there, we have found that all sizes of companies can save substantially on marketing costs and still maintain a strong market presence.

Contact us for personalized information and estimates.