Small changes can unlock extra budget and performance gains for marketers
There’s a recession around the corner. But before we even hurtle round that bend, marketers are already feeling a burn. The cost of media is rising while consumer spending is falling—a painful combination that will squeeze ROI numbers and perception of marketing performance in every business. Where consumers are spending, their path to purchase is becoming increasingly complicated by expanding channels and the desire to make the most eco – and carbon – conscious choices. How can we possibly keep up when budgets are decreasing and our teams are shrinking?
Marketing teams don’t need bigger budgets
They don’t even necessarily need the budgets they had before the bosses began slashing the money, teams and talent. Cuts and inflation are not—and have never been—the greatest threat to marketing success. The greatest threats are (and always have been) inefficiency, poor prioritisation and a wasteful approach to content production.
As the WFA’s strategic partner for content, it’s Brilliant Noise’s duty to share the best and most innovative practice in global content marketing. In the recent WFA Spotlight webinar, Go Faster With Less, our CEO, Antony Mayfield, explained how more efficient global content operations can uncover $5m of extra marketing budget per billion of turnover.
Where’s that $5M?
A ready–reckoner calculation for a company with a $1BN turnover: on average 10% of this goes towards marketing. According to Gartner data, about 10% of that marketing budget is put against content marketing. And, according to Forrester, a shocking average of up to 77% of created content assets are never used—let’s call it a round 50%—so we’re looking at about $5 million of waste per $Billion of annual revenue.
Budgets aren’t just set and spent — they often have to be unlocked. And through optimisation and smarter content operations, teams can find they have more at their disposal than imagined.
When marketing production rests on wasteful operations, bigger budgets just mean more waste
Procurecon found that 40-60% of marketers can’t even point to exactly which assets aren’t making it out into the world. At Brilliant Noise, we see the same among our global clients; the majority of marketing content is duplicated or never used, and teams don’t have the means to measure and keep track. No budget, no matter the size, can afford that.
This is just an example of waste in one particular area. The opportunities to optimise and increase the power of existing non-working marketing spend is immense.
No more single-use content
Marketers are inherently creative people. We like to make, create new content and play with new ideas.
Marketing organisations produce a lot of content. And even the stuff that actually gets used is destined to have a moment in the sun and then an age in an archive after being used just once. But with a content operations audit and a process to rapidly improve, we can help uncover opportunities to repurpose the most effective existing content across channels, markets, seasons and campaigns.
Assets should be categorised, tagged, stored or even atomised in a single, consistent catalogue or toolkit, made accessible across the entire global marketing organisation. This resource can empower marketing teams to create effective content faster, and to measure campaign performance more easily, highlighting the best assets to be reused.
Our programmes have helped global brands like adidas, BMW and Nestlé to reduce and revamp their content production, shrinking campaign costs by up to 33% and creating momentum and excitement for better ways of working in their teams.
Cost-savings = carbon savings
Budget and resources aren’t the only finite resources wasted to inefficient content operations. Optimising global marketing operations also means cutting and recovering wasted carbon.
The efficiencies achieved when you can make content work harder mean you can rake in the cost savings while accelerating movements towards sustainability targets, strengthening your sustainability story and increasing your appeal to rising consumer consciousness.
Marketing production is a carbon greedy business, so making less and better content means burning less carbon. And we all know the imperative for that.
Finding (and focussing on) what works
It’s difficult to know which content strategies to prioritise when times of uncertainty mean the goalposts just. Keep. Moving. Or (as economists might more eloquently put it) marketers are trying to succeed in an environment dominated by non-stationary variables.
Uncertainty slows us down. It’s our kryptonite. It cultivates a level of anxiety that holds creative marketing minds back when they need to be working at their boldest and most competitive pace. But if the variables we’re dealing with aren’t stationary, marketing teams can’t sit stationary either.
Test. Learn. Lead.™
Change is hard. Grand plans with big budgets often fail and it’s natural to feel wary of the very real possibility that transformation could backfire or meet resistance in the wider organisation. We need results to generate confidence, and we need confidence to build results. So, where do we begin?
Our Test. Learn. Lead.™ process has immediate results that set the pace for change. Each test reveals new insights that spark momentum and motivation, energising teams to make better marketing while building a road map for long-term success.
Using a proven framework, we run tests, each of them scored and systematically prioritised. This ensures that budget and time are always going towards opportunities for the fastest and most significant gains.
Let’s take a look
Most marketing leaders know when their content, budget and resources could be working smarter, but it takes an outside eye to point out the blindspots and find exactly where the potential is hiding.
Let’s map the opportunity together with an audit to see where your global marketing operations can be optimised to find and win back those hidden millions. Our initial diagnosis calls are on the house, so book now via the link to take your first steps towards faster, better, more carbon-smart marketing.
Book a call to start measuring your waste and shifting your operations towards faster, better marketing.
