How to Increase Marketing Coverage Without Spending More

It’s hard to imagine finding any marketer who would deny wanting to be able to increase coverage of their target market. Given today’s environment of ever-tightening budgets and a growing number of channels, it’s also hard to imagine finding any marketer who wouldn’t love being able to do it without spending more. The key to increasing market coverage isn’t found in the latest trends in creative, online marketing or social media. It’s found in something most people don’t often think about – marketing procurement.

Any marketing that requires custom goods or services such as direct mail, printed materials, point of sale, signage, displays, packaging, publications and more presents a perfect opportunity to increase coverage or reach without spending more. And, it doesn’t require cutting back on anything or sacrificing quality and service. It simply involves paying more attention, making a few adjustments and taking better control of how your organization procures the goods and services it uses for marketing. Believe it or not, it can be accomplished in three steps.

Step 1: Eliminate Obstacles Between You and Your Vendors

If you are outsourcing any of the management or execution of your marketing material projects to a middleman like a business process outsourcer you are placing an obstacle in your path. Eliminate the obstacle and deal direct with the vendors providing the marketing goods and services you procure. Every extra step you eliminate from the path between you and your vendors will equate to savings in cost, increases in efficiency and better results.

Step 2: Be Specific

The procurement of goods and services your organization relies on for marketing is no place for being vague or unprepared. You must be very clear and detailed about what you want. Specifications must be precise. Roles and responsibilities must be clearly defined. Quality expectations, project milestones and delivery schedules must be established and followed. When changes need to happen midstream in a project, which they will, all of the details must be in order, approved and documented to keep everything on-time, on-spec and on-budget.

Step 3: Use the Right Software Tools

Custom printing, which plays a role in most of the goods marketers procure, operates in a very unique environment with highly specialized processes and requirements. While it might be tempting to try to procure it using enterprise resource planning or general procurement tools, they simply are not built to handle the details and requirements of the strictly custom nature marketing goods and services. That often leaves organizations turning to spreadsheets, emails, phone calls, meetings that result in a quagmire of files, notes and paperwork. At the best this leads to muddling through projects with frustration and headaches. At the worst it leads to confusion, missed deadlines, sacrificed quality, low efficiency, higher costs and possibly failed projects.

Software tools are helpful in properly managing and executing the custom printing you use for marketing. The trick is finding and using the right tools for the job. Before you begin using any software tools for marketing procurement, ask yourself the following questions. Does it automate communication between everyone who plays a role in the project – both internal and external? Does it enable transparency into all aspects of marketing procurement? Does it facilitate establishment and monitoring of project milestones with instant reporting? Does it support compliance with diversity and environmental initiatives? Does it foster an environment of fair competition among your trusted vendors? Does it ensure that quality and service will not be sacrificed for price, while assuring the best possible price? Unless the answer to all of these questions is yes, it is not a powerful enough tool built for marketing procurement’s unique requirements.

Following these three steps you will be able to increase your marketing reach for the same amount, or even less, by simply reassigning the money you would normally spend on outside services, middlemen and inefficiencies to actual marketing projects. You can keep doing it the same old way as before and settle for less. Or you can make a few adjustments, take better control and settle for more. Here at eLynxx Solutions we know which option we’d pick.

How to Increase Marketing Coverage Without Spending More