How can your brand afford the marketing it needs?

Your brand must find a way to afford the marketing it needs. If you are serious about growing your business and staying financially viable for years to come, then you need to be focussing on marketing. When you realise the scope of work which needs to be done you know you can not do it yourself.

An article just published speculates that marketing jobs will skyrocket over the next five years. The article references a study by RMIT and Deloitte Access Economics which predicts another 30,000 jobs will be created, largely to do with the boom in digital marketing.

Sounds great for the young people looking to study marketing, because I can’t believe there are 30,000 unemployed marketers right now. The problem is ‘experience’ counts for so much particularly in an area like marketing where everything is moving so fast. It is instinctual in part, technology driven in another, but very much welded together by a big picture understanding of a business, its sector and its audiences.

The question is how will businesses be able to identify the talent they need and then afford them? That’s right, with increased demand comes increased costs.

Remember marketing is a very broad term for what has now become a lot of very specialised areas. You invariably will not be looking for one person, not to mention accessing the resources and budget they need to do their job.

Take a deep breath, because it is not all bad news. While the traditional model a business follows is to employ staff, it’s not the most effective solution when it comes to marketing. Nor is the old school ‘consultant’. There are two main reasons for this:

1. When you are a creative person it is easy to get bored of working for a single brand (or even a set of brands when you work for a larger company), not to mention the lure of more money elsewhere.

2. You need multiple specialised expertise, and it is therefore unlikely you will need a single expert in a full-time capacity. Don’t fall for the mistake of looking to hire someone who has skills in multiple areas. Does the term ‘jack of all trades and master of none’ ring any bells?

Look for a brand expert who can work externally and will manage multiple expertise for you. When I say brand expert, I am talking about a branding agency, who does more than just focus on establishing a logo. They need to be able to build a long term relationship with you and bring with them access to all the skills you need. You want to have someone who will take the time to understand your brand, what you need to do and what will be affordable to achieve your objectives.

If this sounds a bit like an advertorial, then I apologise. My goal is to get you to think about the reality of the situation differently. You need marketing – there is no escaping this. Hiring staff is simply not the answer unless you are large enough to justify your own team. Even then, it is not the only solution.