Budgeting for Marketing Programs

A mature database marketing program spends under half of their funding toward image awareness and sales lead programs. It seems the majority of business to business marketers put over 90% of their budget into image enhancement, market awareness and sales lead generation programs, while under 10% goes into database marketing. This is a bad approach.

As an alternative, if you're new to the database marketing game, consider putting about 3/4 or your marketing budget into image enhancement, market awareness and sales lead generation. Then spend the remainder funding other database programs with the intent of developing hot prospects until they become qualified leads or make a purchase. You may also want to save a bit of this remaining budget to target your existing customers to retain, upgrade or add-on to the current offerings.

Those businesses which have more developed database programs, particularly those who have demonstrated an ability to measure and increase sales from database marketing programs, end up spending less than 50% of their budget on these sales lead, image and awareness-enhancing programs. Why is this so? It's simple: they've discovered they don't have to spend so much on these objectives while using a quality database marketing program to communicate directly to sub-sections of the overall marketplace.

These savvy database marketers are able to use the remaining 50% on communications programs which are directed specifically at their prospects, customers, and leads. These select, coordinated and consistent marketing campaigns are designed to locate and develop sales opportunities.

Although sales lead generation, image, and awareness all play an important role, these programs are most effective along with a well-executed database marketing program. A good balance between both marketing aspects will help you reach top levels of performance in your direct marketing efforts.