Make a brand shine on a shoe-string budget

Marketing departments have forever been faced by the challenge of doing more with less money. Work in the industry long enough, and you are invariably asked that most dreaded of questions: “Yes, but can you do more with your marketing budget this year?”

I would like to take you through the journey of how to effectively build your brand, and share some of the lessons I’ve learned on how to effectively use a limited budget to achieve great results.

Success Stories

Every once in a while, someone in the brand building world does something so unexpected, so brilliant and so effective that it shatters the expectations of what is possible. A few years ago, everyone talked about Stormhoek Wines and how it became the best-selling wine in Tesco’s in the UK. Utilising an innovative blogger relations strategy, Stormhoek built a world-famous brand with a very limited budget.

The latest success story that equates to Stormhoek is that of the Queensland Tourism Board and its very effective and highly-differentiated social media campaign to promote the Great Barrier Reef. Limited by a very tight budget, they utilised an integrated social media campaign that had a small yet significant real-world presence to generate global media exposure in excess of $80-million.

How did they do it?

1.       It’s a journey – not a destination

As with people, it is important to understand that all brands go on a journey: from being known, to being known for something different, to being esteemed and loved. It’s not an overnight process – it requires consistent, engaging brand-building efforts that are specifically tailored to suit the brand’s target market.

2.       The times they are a-changing

In his brilliant book, The Brand Gap, Marty Nieumeier writes that it is no longer what you think of your brand that is important, but rather what they – the consumer – thinks of your brand that defines it. It is one of the most hard-hitting and powerful brand truths of our time – before you spend any money on marketing or brand building, you need to truly understand who your target market is, what they want, and how they want to be engaged with.

3.       Take advantage of your touch-points

Marketers should stop thinking about marketing channels and start focusing on touch points. Prioritise your brand’s touch points according to their importance to consumers and frequency of reach. In other words, which touch points exist, and how can you effectively engage with your target market through each of these touch points? There are more effective communication channels than expensive radio and TV advertising – this is one of the most important money-saving lessons that any brand owner can learn.

4.       Be relevant, engaging and different

The modern consumer is tired of the same old things – you need to be as different in your approach as possible. Regardless of what you do to increase engagement, always ask this one question: “Is this relevant to the consumer and his or her needs?” Whenever you engage with a consumer, do it on an emotive level and use the intrinsic or rational aspects of the brand offering – i.e. value-for-money – to build credibility in the brand.

5.       The brand essence – that one thing

Ask yourself: “What is my brand famous for? What is the one thing that I want my brand to be remembered for?” Before you start any kind of communication, you need to define what is at the core of your brand – it is the one thing that will drive all communication efforts. A brand doesn’t need to be in consumers’ faces all the time – rather, it should stand for something that solves a deep human need. You need to ask yourself what human need your brand solves, and build your communication campaigns around reinforcing this.

How I stopped worrying and started to love the budget

So how did the Queensland Tourism Board manage to launch such a successful campaign using a limited budget? Simple – they followed the steps outlined above.

They knew that the tourism market had changed, and that they needed to do something quite different to be effective. They advertised in the job classifieds, offering The Best Job on Earth which entailed living on an island for six months and getting paid a fat salary, and the only requirements were feeding the fish and blogging about it.

The Queensland Tourism Board understood that the modern consumer is over-loaded, over-stressed and that everyone wishes for that dream job, so they offered it. At the core of their campaign was the idea of escapism, playing on people’s wish to break of the mundane and be free and careless. This created a strong emotive link between the brand and the people who felt that they needed an escape.

Marketing success on a shoe-string budget is no longer dependent on cost-cutting such as decreasing the size of your print advertisements – it has become all about increasing engagement and relevance. In today’s marketplace, this is the only path to successful brand building.

By Reghard Goussard