‘Cutting on marketing spends in tough times not an ideal move’

The e4m Pride of Brands: The Best Of North, Conference & Awards 2023 witnessed a panel discussion titled ‘Powerful marketing strategy: A key to success’. Industry leaders spoke about what business impacts marketing and how brands can optimize marketing budgets for improving brand performance.

The panel was chaired by Amit Wadhwa, CEO, Dentsu Creative ( India ) and consisted of Suman Varma, CMO, Hamdard ( Medicine Division ), Amit Anand, MD, Apis India, Udita Bansal, Founder & CEO, trueBrowns, Prashant Sinha, Co-Founder, Momspresso, Raghunandan Saraf, Founder & CEO, Saraf Furniture and Ravi Singhal, CEO, GCL.

While talking about the impact on marketing during tough times, Udita Bansal says, “So I would say top of the funnel marketing spend is something that we would hold on to, but the bottom, you continue to spend. So, for us, sales are directly linked to our digital communication, our digital presence, and how often and continuously we keep talking to our consumers. So direct marketing cut, I wouldn't say that is what we would do. But top-of-the-funnel spend is something that we would control. I think when we are talking about marketing spent, if the content is correct, and we keep putting it across at the right channel, the consumer listens to you. So which channel you would cut the marketing spend is something that is important, but not all channels you would cut the marketing spend.”

Amit Anand also believes the marketing budget is not something that should be cut down completely during hard times, especially for newer businesses. “Whenever you want to build a brand, you have to rely on marketing. Even if it's tough times, you have to keep going. In good times, of course, you're doing it. But for distribution, making people aware of your product and reminding them of everything, marketing is important. So, my perspective is that one should keep spending on marketing during bad times. It's not something which will fade away you have to make your presence felt and remind people that you are there, especially for brands like us which are not very old.”

Raghunandan Saraf kept with the similar theme of the discussion and gave an example of how it worked well for Saraf Furniture. “Times are tough when something of an external nature is disrupting the business as a whole or the industry as a whole. Yes, the marketing spends do come under scrutiny but they ideally shouldn't. If you are reducing your marketing spend in those times that works as a catalyst to the already bad conditions. We worked the other way around right after the COVID lockdown was lifted first of all. We on the other hand went ahead and spent a lot on marketing. That worked wonders for us. So marketing is more about being visible, every day every time a customer is there in whichever medium, it’s important to be visible there and less about sales. At the end of the day business depends on it, but we have to stay visible.”