Adam T. Sutton

More Efficient Marketing

June 15th, 2009

“In a bad economy, the last thing you want to cut back on is marketing,” says Jeremy Farber, President and Founder, PC Recycler.

Farber’s team added between 20% and 30% to its marketing budget over the last year to avoid losing ground, and in hopes of gaining market share, he says. That created several new processes and a lot more work for the electronic waste management service’s marketing team.

Last fall, after the budget increase, the marketing team was distressed. It could not keep up with looming deadlines unless cuts were made or an additional person hired. Being based in the metro Washington D.C. area, Farber did not want to hire another marketing manager.

“A white collar job around here is expensive.”

Instead, the team tested using Lyris HQ, a search, email and analytics software package. The tool combined several of the team’s separate processes into one platform — saving a ton of time, Farber says.

“We’re getting more work done now with the same budget and the same people, which obviously is translating into better ROI.”

Farber estimates that using the tool is about 60% to 70% less than the cost of hiring another person. On top of that, the tool proved more effective than some of the separate systems that the team previously used. For example, the insights gleaned from Lyris’ Web analytics revealed ways to boost conversion rates from paid search marketing — the team’s number one lead generator.

So even though the Chinese word for crisis is not exactly “danger” and “opportunity,” a down economy is still not a good time to cut a marketing budget. Instead, it’s a time to look for greater efficiencies.

Adam T. Sutton

About Adam T. Sutton

Adam T. Sutton, Senior Reporter, MarketingSherpa
Adam generates content for MarketingSherpa's Email and Inbound Marketing newsletters. His years of experience in interviewing marketers and conveying their insights has spanned topics such as search marketing, social media marketing, ecommerce, email and more. Adam previously powered the content behind MarketingSherpa's Search and Consumer-marketing newsletters and carries that experience into his new role. Today, in addition to writing articles, he contributes content to the MarketingExperiments and MarketingSherpa blogs, as well as MECLABS webinars, workshops and summits.

Prior to joining MarketingSherpa, Adam was the Managing Editor at the Mequoda group. There he created content and promotions for the company's daily email newsletter and managed its schedule.

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  1. June 17th, 2009 at 07:37 | #1

    We work in the lead generation business for media. Every day we generate leads for all forms of media across the country. We match small businesses with local media and in most cases both have greatly reduced their marketing expenditures. Marketing is always the first to be cut leading to the self fulfilling prophecy of reduced sales and in turn slowing the company’s return to a strong post-recession position. Now is the time to work harder at finding better ways to run your company so that you can stay competitive through a strong marketing presence.

  2. June 25th, 2009 at 11:13 | #2

    Adam, Great Post!

    I’ve definitely benefited in the past 6 months or so, as I’m finding businesses pulling marketing dollars from print and going online. They know, now more than ever, they can’t skimp on marketing.

    I’m also nearing the point where I have to make the call – hire a body or buy software. I’m favoring the software solution for cost and efficiency reasons. I’ll defintiely check out Lyris, as they seem to do it all.

    Thanks!

    Matt
    http://www.advisionmarketing.com/blog/

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