NEXT COMPETITIVE MARKETING ADVANTAGE! RESEARCH

How effective is your marketing?

Are you growing market share, losing to competitors or treading water and drifting, asks Mike Rigby, CEO of MRA Research?

In the last 10 years, researchers working on marketing effectiveness have changed the standing and practice of marketing. Stung by criticism that marketing was more art than science, and where was the proof that marketing worked and how it worked, researchers set out to establish beyond doubt what works and what doesn’t. The result? Several important things are no longer matters of opinion or debate.

Two researchers in particular, Les Binet and Peter Field, have been conducting large scale, long running analyses on the database of many thousands of marketing case studies gathered over decades by the Institute of Practitioners of Advertising.

They’ve discovered a lot but, as we hover near recession, two things they’ve proved conclusively are timely.

The first is about marketing in recession. Is it smarter to cut or stop spending on marketing until the economy recovers? Or should you maintain or increase your spend? It turns out that companies that ‘go dark’ and cut spending, get a short term lift from the savings they make, but pay dearly for it later. They do much worse in the medium to long term. Few recover the loss of share and momentum.

Why? Firms that do less make it easier for others who do the same or more. Their ‘Share of Voice’ becomes greater, so they become top of mind, and being top of mind is a key driver in customer acquisition, off and online. Firms that stay in the game do better in recession and enter recovery with momentum and raised awareness. Firms who go dark lose momentum and awareness. Restarting takes time and reconnecting is hard. Cutting marketing therefore has profound consequences. Lost momentum is often lost for ever.

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