If you run a business of any kind, you'll know how important marketing is to your success. You're probably also aware of how much it can cost. What you might not find so easy to measure is the return on investment that you're getting from it. 

It follows that when you're looking to save money in your business, some of these intangible, difficult-to-measure things are the first to go. That could be your biggest mistake. 

Marketing should always be a strategy - you should never rely on a single method alone, and all the threads of your campaign should ideally reinforce each other with a consistent message. That message should sum up the benefits of your product to the consumer or the aspiration that your product is associated with - whatever works. 

Also, ideally again, you should have a pretty clear idea of which parts of your campaign are doing the best job and which are less effective, pound-for-pound or dollar-for-dollar. Often though, it's hard to be sure. 

That's where it becomes dangerous when you start to make cuts. Most of your campaign's threads are inter-dependent. Cut one and you disable the others. Save thirty percent, say, by scrapping one promotional method and you might reduce the effectiveness of the whole campaign by eighty or ninety percent. Effectively, you've killed it. 

Saving money has effectively cost you money by making the money you are still spending a total waste. 

You should try to maximise the effectiveness of the methods you're using and be inventive and open-minded in exploring other methods. Because, when all is said and done, you need sales, but… look very carefully before you cut a single element of your campaign. Cut costs, by all means, but don't cut your business' throat. 

Roy Everitt, writing for results

www.royeveritt.com