How Marketing Leaders are Navigating Recession In the last six months, economic trend surveys we've conducted revealed that 37% of marketers are reporting budget cuts – likely due to our changing economy. As a marketer, knowing where your leadership team might need to cut can help you prepare to pivot to strategies with less resourcing. And, if you lead a team, you're likely wondering how marketing leaders are navigating this time to make the best decisions for your staff and business in uncertain times. To help you navigate reducing your marketing budget in 2023, we used tools like Glimpse to survey more than 500 marketing leaders on their top strategies for cutting costs. We also asked them which channels they plan to pull back on first, so you can get an idea of what to expect. How Marketing Leaders Are Already Pivoting Our full report, the Marketing Leader’s Playbook, revealed 80% of leaders have already taken steps to plan or prepare for a recession - so let’s dive right in and see what we can learn. How Marketing Leaders Are Cutting Costs in 2023 Marketing leaders say leaning into earned media, leveraging automation or AI, looking for emerging marketing opportunities, using organic marketing channels, and optimizing your media mix are the top strategies for cutting costs, so let’s take a look at each in more detail below. 1. Tapping Into Earned Media over Paid Media Tapping into earned media is a great (and free) opportunity to...

3 Ways Marketers are Already Navigating Potential Recession While economists and investors debate whether we are or aren’t in a recession, 78% of marketers say it's already here. Since marketers are usually the first to see budget cuts in an economic downturn, it’s no surprise they’re already being hit hard. As one marketer in our sums it up: “The company is losing money, having to raise pricing, and the budget for marketing is smaller. Because prices are higher and the marketing budget is lower, there is not enough marketing for the traffic and conversions we need.” To help marketers recognize they're not alone, we surveyed 300 marketers to find out exactly how they are being impacted by the recession. While 47% of marketers said that the economy was already having a negative impact on their work, we also dug deeper to discover three key impact themes marketers are experiencing. In this post, we'll highlight those themes, share quotes from anonymous marketers who's participated, and offer resources or tips to help you navigate this time. Three Marketing Impacts Caused by Recession Concerns 1. Consumers are spending less and exercising more caution/discretion: Though not surprising, the biggest impact marketers are seeing is that consumers are cutting costs back due to uncertainty. This aligns well with data we've found from multiple consumer pulse surveys over the last six months.   From inflation to geopolitical uncertainty and lingering COVID-19 concerns, consumers simply have no idea what to expect from the...

The Best Free Business Budget Worksheets Keeping track of expenses as a business owner can be taxing. You have to document every detail to make sure you stay within your spending limits while promoting your products or services, delivering on promises, and developing new offerings. A business budget worksheet can help you stay organized. Having a template to work from will cut down on the time it takes to write down the details of a budget, help you prioritize projects and allocate resources to get them done, and reveal trends of the money you spend versus the results achieved. Depending on the complexity of your company, you may need to oversee a number of individual budgets while managing the overall spend. The business budget worksheets below range from specific templates — from product marketing to website redesign — to comprehensive ones that cover all aspects of your marketing plan. Let's dive in so you can take control of your budget like never before. How to Write a Business Budget 1. Use Budget Templates Creating a business budget from scratch can be overwhelming—you need to capture the details of each month's projected budget, actual spend, and the cumulative total of each. If you've never written a business budget or are looking for a specific marketing worksheet, you can start with HubSpot's Marketing Budget Templates. This download includes eight well-designed and detailed templates to easily manage your finances, with options for Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. A quick overview explains how...

The Best Free Business Budget Templates Whether you’re a solopreneur or running a massive corporation, you need a business budget to understand where your money is coming from and going. A business budget template can help keep the numbers organized, making it easy for you to track revenue, plan for expenses, and save for future growth. You don’t have to be an accountant to organize your business budget. There are thousands of business budget templates out there to make the process easy. Once you understand what a business budget is and how it can work for you, you can use one of the following free templates to start organizing your finances. The business budget follows a set template, which you can fill in with estimated revenues, plus any recurring or expected business expenses. For example, if you run a digital marketing business, you might know that you typically make about $10,000 for your work creating campaigns, plus an extra $5,000 for your digital courses. You’d list the estimated revenue from all of your business’ revenue streams as incoming money for the business. Then, you have your recurring expenses, which you would list as outgoing money. This could include employee salaries, office expenses, and software and technology costs. How to Create a Business Budget Creating a business budget is a straightforward process, but it can be more complex for larger companies. Here are the basic steps to creating a business budget. 1. Find a Template or Make a Spreadsheet There...

Extended Marketing Mix: What It Is and Why It's Useful Cooking is my favorite pastime. It's so much fun to find new recipes and learn about new ingredients. Plus, (usually) the results are delicious. Finding new recipes and ingredients is nothing short of delightful. One meal I love to make is grilled cheese — but not just any ole' grilled cheese. Instead, I use plant-based ingredients and add two condiments: butter, and mayonnaise (trust me). If I were making grilled cheese for me, I'd have to add some things. First, all of my ingredients have to be plant-based due to my dietary restrictions. Second, I'd add two more condiments: butter and mayonnaise (trust me). On its own, cheese and bread is a great duo. But with a few additions, a nice duo becomes an excellent mix — one that I'm always excited to eat. Like a perfect sandwich, every marketing structure calls for good strategies, or "ingredients," that make it great. Those "ingredients" are generally referred to as a marketing mix, and can be summed up in four categories: Product, pricing, placement, and promotion. While the marketing mix describes the basics for product marketing, it doesn't have room for services marketing. That's where the extended marketing mix comes into play. And, just like my vegan grilled cheeses, a few additional changes can elevate your service marketing structure to the next level. Here, let's dive into what extended marketing mix means, and how it can help Extended Marketing Mix...

The Plain English Guide to Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) As a writer, I've never been very good at math. I know … shocking. Most marketers can relate, because as a bunch, we tend to be better at English and history than math and science. However, as a marketer, we need to be able to analyze data and calculate the effectiveness of an article or campaign, even though math might not be our strong suit. One of the calculations we need to run and metrics we need to track is return on ad spend (ROAS). Below, let's review ROAS. In this post, we'll discuss what ROAS is, how it's different from ROI, and how to calculate it. Ultimately, ROAS is meant to measure the effectiveness of a specific ad campaign, not your overall ROI -- more on that below. Besides ROAS, you'll most likely measure other metrics such as click-through rate and ROI. By measuring multiple metrics, you'll get a more accurate view of your results. Of course, measuring performance and tracking analytics is an important part of any marketing campaign. By tracking performance, you can improve and iterate on your marketing techniques. Plus, data is one of the only ways to truly prove that your department brings in revenue, which is incredibly important. However, it's important to note that not everything can be measured with quantitative data. For instance, calculating brand awareness and sentiment is much more difficult. And while you can calculate downloads or email sign-ups,...

How to Develop a Successful Marketing Mix Strategy One of the first things you're taught in your Introduction to Marketing class is that marketing can be best explained using the marketing mix — also known as the four P's. They are — and say 'em with me, because if you took that class, you know these four words by heart: Product Price Place Promotion One of the first things you're taught in your first marketing internship or job, however, is that marketing entails so much more than can be simplified in a four-section marketing mix matrix. Still, there's an undeniable benefit of marketing teams organizing their work into the marketing mix framework. When you stray too far away from the four P's, it can be easy to lose focus on your purpose as a marketer. Marketing truly is about teams and individuals working together to promote a product in the right place at the right price point. Efforts beyond this scope are essential, but they do all stem off of this foundation of the marketing mix. Here, we're going to dive into what a marketing mix is and how to develop a successful marketing mix strategy for your own company. What is a Marketing Mix? The marketing mix refers to the actions a company takes to market its product(s) and/or service(s). Typically, it acts as a framework for breaking down the four key components of marketing — product, price, place, and promotion. ...

Marketing Without a Budget? Use These Tactics for Success As a habitual spender bee, the day before payday is, sadly, one of scant spending. Some of the marketing teams I've been on have had similar budget issues (although those weren't brought on by online shopping like mine). While having a tight marketing budget can make the job harder, there's still plenty you can do. Below, let's review the top tactics to implement when you're marketing without a budget. 1. Improve content marketing. Content marketing is one of the top ways to market your brand when your team is on a tight budget. For example, you can start a blog. Blogs are a great way to reach your audience and build organic traffic to your site. Plus, you can use this space to answer customer questions and attract leads. If you run out of content ideas, don't forget that you can repurpose old content. You don't have to reinvent the wheel with every post. You can create an infographic or video to attract new audiences on different platforms, like YouTube. Additionally, you can strengthen content partnerships by guest blogging on other sites and accepting guest submissions on your blog. This is an excellent way to expand your audience for free. Vana Korrapati, a digital marketing strategist, says, "Identify your target audience and their pain points. Write blogs that address their pain points with at least one key takeaway. This helps you build a list of leads that could turn...