A fresh approach to building a cost-effective strategy
How can you use the zero-based budgeting technique to build a more efficient and more effective marketing strategy?
Some people love it, others hate it, and you can use it to reinvigorate your strategy and improve your marketing budgeting. If you need a fresh injection of thinking, ideas and activity it is worth considering. If you are not keen on uncomfortable conversations and justifying all your expenses, then stop reading now.
You are not going to get different results by doing the same things. So if you need to break inertia in your marketing, this could be for you.
Very simply, zero-based budgeting starts the planning from scratch rather than taking last year as the base to work from. It means you need to know exactly what you are spending, justify everything and prioritise ruthlessly.
It is a great process if you want to be sure that all marketing spending is delivering a return (financial or otherwise). It’s also preferable if you are in the mindset of spending money rather than budget.
You need to know that it takes more effort and is more time-consuming, so perhaps not to do yearly. If you want to give your marketing a shot in the arm, here are the steps to follow:
Work out your desired outcomes: Start by being crystal clear on what you are trying to achieve as a business, what is the role of your marketing, and what good looks like. You will evaluate all your ideas on how well they deliver against these outcomes.
Generate ideas: Identify all your potential marketing activities. We use a design thinking approach.
Prioritise: Rank these activities based on their potential impact on achieving your business outcomes. This could include factors like brand visibility, audience engagement, lead generation, or sales conversion.
Allocate your money: dedicate your resources to each activity based on its priority and anticipated impact.
Implement the activity: Your job really starts when the plan is agreed so get going.
Measure and refine: The reason to use zero-based budgeting is to be meticulous about what you are spending, so keep close to the money you are spending and the results it is delivering. If it isn’t working as desired, ensure you have the scope to tweak the activity.
It’s as simple as that. Don’t underestimate the work involved, but also the transformation it can provide. It will also make you flavour-of-the-month with whoever is in charge of the purse strings.
