I was presenting to a group of professionals last week at a UTC Marketing Clinic. (click here to download the podcast) They were bemoaning the fact that in response to our current economy, the time honored “Do more with less” management mandate had once again been handed down from on high. We spent a moment playing out the doomsday scenarios for marketing budgets, and then I urged them to consider turning the phrase around and letting that be their marketing mantra moving ahead.

“Do less with more,” I said, meaning shrink what you are planning to do so your budget looks sizable again…and do it well. Don’t just scale everything back across the board and keep the same initiatives intact. “If you just scale back wholesale, I warned them, “you’ll risk doing nothing well and it will be like putting a nickel in the Coke machine—no Coke, just a wasted nickel.”

 
In times of downturn, focus staves off dwindling marketing budgets. Focus on existing customers, existing markets, existing channels and existing strategic relationships. Shore up those trusted vehicles that makes sense. That’s assuming that what you’ve been doing along the way has been working.
 
If on the other hand, you’re in the middle or revising your marketing approach because what you were doing in good times wasn’t working, then I urge you to do new tactics with precision and measure everything along the way so you don’t burn cash with nothing to show for it.
 
And as always, I cautioned my audience against committing what I affectionately call, “random acts of marketing” in this already random market. Nothing hurts companies more than wasting marketing dollars on random stuff.