ShoutIT

10/12/08
Don’t market yourself into the recession.

Posted by: Sarah Hughes

Vendors provide MDF (marketing development funds) to extend the scope of their own marketing, ensure partners are consistent with vendor messaging and to offer partners guidance and expertise about how to compile effective marketing campaigns.

Given the economic climate, I believe vendors should be placing a higher percentage of their marketing budgets into co-marketing activity. Given they usually fund 50%, vendors get more bang for their buck from an organisation that is much closer to understanding the customer need and how to visualise a solution to that need rather than a pure product message.

I recently put together an MDF request for one of my clients to submit to one of their vendor partners presenting a small-but-perfectly formed marketing campaign that had all the essential elements; access to well targeted data, creation of thought leadership collateral, lead generation and a nice blend of online/offline activity along with tight measurement.

I was asked by the vendor to join a call to talk through the plan in more detail. Fine I thought, nothing unusual there.

So the call came, I talked through the proposal and asked for clarity on next steps. The feedback was great, ‘we should be doing more of this ourselves’ said one ‘it’s great to see such a strong integrated marketing approach’ said another.

I was informed however, that said vendor would merely fund 50% of one small element of the plan.

Now I realise that budgets are limited, everyone is being asked to do more with less and fiercely measure the return. An integrated marketing approach does just that. Material can be re-used for many other purposes, e.g. PR and events, data can be utilised for future campaigns and the entire customer journey, from awareness to purchase can be tracked.

Would it not have been better for the vendor to do nothing at all rather than offer to fund such a tiny element. After all, a standalone marketing tactic is unlikely to have any impact.

It’s kind of a self fulfilling prophecy really. So long as marketers approach marketing in this tactical way, their budgets will be questioned and ultimately cut.