HEMP STEP 12. How Much?

Clients will often say to their agency, as Managing Directors will also say to their marketing teams, “If I tell you the budget you’ll spend it.” My response is always the same, “That’s right, so tell me how much you’d like to spend.” I’ve never known a marketing budget not to get spent somewhere or somehow and I’ve seen many go over. Why muck about playing games? Either you’re going to make the investment or you’re not. Now before you go any further, remind yourself of how much money your desired result is going to make (see HEMP step two). And, unless you’re a dotcom or have a very unusual business model I suggest that the starting point in determining your HEMP budget is a figure lower than both the turnover and profit you’ve identified! Now this doesn’t mean you have to spend it all at once in the style of 1960s pools winner Viv “spend, spend, spend” Nicholson – indeed in a couple of steps time we’ll look at measurement of your investment over time – but pick a figure. Come on, you have one already don’t you?

The very best HEMP has a series of stages, which enables resources and the level of investment to increase, if necessary, in direct proportion to the results. Sometimes there needs to be a significantly higher upfront investment to get the early momentum and, on the face of it, your HEMP might not be progressed because the size of investment is just too large. If you’re in this situation perhaps you could consider at this stage rethinking your strategy without having to abandon your desired result. For example, GMAC Residential Funding, a General Motors Company, opened for business in 1998. Although it is one of the largest lenders in the USA it had no business, reputation or brand in the UK. As its competition included former building societies, such as the Halifax, who have invested hundreds of millions of pounds over many decades, it was decided not to even try and compete in the same way. The idea of marketing GMAC Residential Funding to the consumer was scrapped; it was just too expensive even for a General Motors Company. Instead the selected tactic has been to promote the company, its products and services to financial advisors and encourage them to inform the ultimate customer of what’s on offer. Despite investing less than 1% of what the major competition invest, GMAC Residential Funding is the UK’s thirteenth largest mortgage lender overall and is number one in the highly competitive sub-prime mortgage sector. Often it’s how creative you are with your strategy that will determine your success.