Cutting is the soft option

It is not that difficult to cut budgets.

It is not difficult at all to cut a marketing budget. You just use a pen. You rule a line through items.

Any fool can do it. And before long, it’s all over. Fifty percent of marketing initiatives are off the agenda.

The speed and ease of the cutting operation may give you the clue as to what is really happening. Cutting items out of marketing is actually the soft option.

It is much more challenging to carry out a thoughtful review of activities and to decide how best you can achieve the results you need with less marketing investment.

Instead of cutting the initiatives that the manager does not like – or maybe does not understand – what professional marketers do is re-evaluate the marketing plan and analyse what is working and what's not.

Doing the job for long term benefit means exploring new options of marketing that cost less, but can still deliver the results you are looking for. It means checking the relevance of popular no-cost or low-cost marketing tips that you can begin implementing today.

When you recognise the need to be resourceful, obviously, social media is an option. This may be the perfect time to give social media marketing a try. We can be fairly certain that it won’t be the complete answer, but depending on your target market and how much time you are prepared to put in, it may be effective for you.

Using networking tools such as Facebook, the business-oriented LinkedIn or the rapidly growing Twitter, you can connect with a huge, diverse population. Of course, you have to make an effort in building your online network. You have to reach out and build relationships with those you have something in common with.

And remember, things are moving rapidly. If you looked at Facebook, for example, six months ago and decided it was just for kids, that’s history. Today, the demographic of Facebook continues to broaden.

Not sure about that?

Just look at these figures provided by O’Reilly Media. Between September 2008 and February 2009:

> The number of Facebook users between the ages of 35 and 44 increased by 51%
> Facebook users among the ages 45-54 grew by 47%
> Facebook users aged 26-34 increased by 26%
> More than half of the 140 million Facebook users are out of college.

With, apparently, some 600 million searches and more than 30 billion page views a month, the volumes alone justify a second look.

And, maybe surprisingly, the picture is similar with Twitter. According to an eMarketer report, Twitter drew 4 million unique visitors from home, work and college/university locations in February 2009, up from 340,000 a year earlier – a 1,086 percent increase. After months of double-digit growth, traffic to Twitter accelerated 131 percent to 9.3 million visitors for the month of March 2009.

Social networking may or may not have a future, and it may or may not be an opportunity for your business. Who knows? But one thing is sure. You should be monitoring it.