When I hear sales departments say that December is a particularly successful month, having sold three times the normal sales, I cannot help but wonder at what cost these extra sales have been achieved? For instance, do marketers spend eight times the advertising budget at the end of the year or are these extra sales purely organic, gleaned from the ‘normal' allocated budgets?
Marketers should also factor in the amount of budget wasted over seasonal periods because of huge clutter, as every brand fights for extra share of voice to gain, and maintain, awareness.
Marketers need to cost these ‘extra sales' against actual delivery. During high spending periods, consumers generally have a few extra rand in their pockets and are out to spend it, but how many sales would marketers have generated regardless of the extra spend being incurred?
Do marketers quantify the cost of acquisition for those extra unit sales? Also, which part of your media specifically worked against actual sales (not ratings), and which parts didn't work at all? Imagine you could differentiate between those marketing elements that worked especially well and identify those that didn't, so you could replace what hasn't worked to eliminate wastage?
These are questions that if a marketer knew the answers to and could remedy, could generate up to 30% more sales with the same spend, over the same period. Now, how is that for an increase in profits and market share when things seem so bleak?
There are often other months that one overlooks that may actually be delivering a lot more, compared to a fraction of the spend with improved return on investment. Shouldn't advertisers be spending a little more in such months?
Different regions and distribution channels will deliver differently with each campaign, specific to the company's store footprint, media mix received, and product selection, which further adds to the confusion.
With an accurate and scientifically guided tracking system that qualifies all communication spend against sales down to area, region, product and category, businesses can genuinely consider how successful any result actually was. The MBTS solution will demonstrate to a business whether it spent R10 or R1000 trying to sell the same product. Obviously, the lower the Marketing Cost Per Unit (MCPU), the better a result. The system also measures the effects of competitor activity.
MBTS has a Marketing Ranking application that scientifically tracks the effectiveness of all marketing against actual sales, defining which aspect of your media schedule worked the best or not, by inputting the marketing and media plan, carefully gauging the resulting sales. This provides advertisers and their media agencies the opportunity of maximising valuable advertising budget and increasing their output.
Also, to make your budgets go further, MBTS will guide marketers with an optimum ratio of budget spend versus actual sales return. Rearranging budgets and backing the media and time slots that work best for your service or product, supported by sales and transactional data, ensures a more profitable and successful business that is yours for the taking.
