MARKETING AND ADVERTISING: MANAGING CAMPAIGNS AND BUDGETS

Topic: Marketing on a Shoestring Budget

Scenario: Today’s competitive landscape is more crowded than ever, making it harder to stand out, let alone capture and hold customers’ interest. But in the wake of the pandemic and the recession which followed, many businesses are strapped for marketing dollars. Finding clever and cost-affordable ways to promote products and services will be growingly critical going forward, with myriad competitors now just a click or call away.

Insight: Having personally made and marketed bestselling products with next to know marketing budget, we can confirm that a little cleverness and creativity can go a long way to helping a business stand out. This can be as simple as taking an offbeat approach to promotions, adopting a strong or contrarian stance on popular subjects, or using original methods and mediums to tell a well-known story in a new way. Similarly, piggybacking on trending news topics, or partnering with other businesses and brands to combine your reach can also be a powerful way to advertise and raise awareness for your company. You don’t have to have a lot of resources to be successful with marketing campaigns, just a little bit more clever and resourceful.

Topic: How Zero-Based Budgeting and Accounting Can Help Your Business Thrive

Scenario: Businesses often base new budgets off historical accounting and prior year budgets. But in times of uncertainty and disruption, they need a more flexible budgeting model that can help them better account for uncertainty as well. 

Insight: Zero-based budgeting is a method of accounting in which every line item or expense must be justified and approved for each new period. In effect, rather than relying on past history, it forces business leaders to make a proven case for adding every proposed investment. Likewise, by forcing all expenses to be subject to periodic review, it also enables executives to regularly surface areas where cost savings can be realized, and those savings funneled back into more productive investments and uses of working capital.