MARKETING & COMMUNICATION
+++Smart Budgeting - Better marketing performance with Marketing Budget Intelligence+++
"I never did marketing. I always just loved my customers." (Zino Davidoff)
There's no better way of encapsulating what market-based management means in terms of marketing and communication than those words uttered by the frontrunner in luxury goods marketing. Only companies that love their customers, or, to put in another way, that consistently focus their marketing and communication activities on their customers' needs, preferences, and desires, will be on the pulse of their market and get customers to love them back.
But customer focus alone no longer guarantees successful marketing. The position of marketing has become more and more difficult as the years have gone by. Constant growth in the number of customer segments, sales channels, touchpoints, and ultimately also products has led to the emergence of a wide variety of different marketing paradigms that tend to confuse rather than to provide structure. We have long since left the era of one-to-one and now find ourselves in the much more complex world of many-to-many.
And it's not just the markets, it's also companies' own organizations that are increasingly presenting marketeers with genuine challenges. What's happening more and more is that marketing is actually expected to support sales in the short term rather than to make any long-term contribution to the company's success. Furthermore, the contribution to success needs to be demonstrated in ever-more quantifiable terms. And even then, the battle for internal resources is becoming ever-fiercer, forcing even marketing – or especially marketing – to deliver maximum efficiency and effectiveness.
KEYLENS has spent many years actively supporting companies in designing and putting in place the foundations for a genuinely market-based corporate culture, for instance by procuring relevant customer insights, by developing marketing strategies directly protected by revenue and profit potential, by designing truly innovative campaigns, or by increasing marketing effectiveness and efficiency on the basis of the KEYLENS ROMI approach (return on marketing investment).
Some of the aspects our consultancy focuses on:
- Marketing strategy
- Customer segmentation
- Communication strategy and campaign logic
- Agency selection and management
- Marketing efficiency and effectiveness
- Marketing budgeting
SELECTED KEYLENS PROJECT EXAMPLES
Brand manufacturer
BRAND MANUFACTURER
Issue:
Increasing marketing efficiency
Objective:
Installing a professional system of marketing performance measurement for the revenue-based development of communication activities (particularly in the networking of wholesale and retail)
Results:
- We determined an individual ROMI approach (return on marketing investment)
- Analyzed the performance of marketing activities
- Determined and quantified the individual adjustments, incl. stipulating a future review of ROMI
- Formulated an implementation plan with responsibilities assigned
KEYLENS success levers:
Innovative consideration of an industry-spanning benchmarking approach ("inter-practitioner exchange")
Windows and doors manufacturer
WINDOWS AND DOORS MANUFACTURER
Issue:
Realigning the marketing strategy
Objective:
Revitalizing the brand and thereby achieving substantially higher growth
Results:
- We identified the status quo pertaining to the brand and its success factors
- Increased sales by means of a stronger focus on business segments and target groups
- Prepared a new national advertising campaign in combination with a reworked marketing mix
- Embedded a stronger end customer perspective in the company
KEYLENS success levers:
Closely linking business strategy and marketing strategy, and thereby deploying the marketing mix exclusively to achieve identified objectives
Tourism group I
TOURISM GROUP I
Issue:
Marketing budgeting
Objective:
Improving the allocation of the marketing budget and establishing a formalized budgeting process to reduce conflicts between the functions involved
Results:
- We developed a new budget structure, focused on brands and differentiated by corporate and brand budget, inter- and intra-brand allocation
- Introduced the central planning logic based on (market share) protection budgets and growth budgets
- Completely redefined the effective marketing budget and embedded it down to the cost center level
- Developed an Excel-based budget tool and a new budgeting process authorized by top management
KEYLENS success levers:
Development of a new type of budgeting model specially tailored to the client based on the core logic of growth vs. protection budgets; establishment of a group of "change drivers" (willing to challenge established norms) from among middle management
Tourism group II
TOURISM GROUP II
Issue:
Brand strategy and development of new, high-margin products
Objective:
Creating new tourism products with high gross profits, with which to secure future profitable growth in the tour operator business
Results:
- We developed a novel form of customer segmentation, unique in a European context, that links lifestyle data, travel needs, and specific travel behavior
- Identified high-revenue and high-profitability customer segments
- Developed various showcase tourism products for these segments (brand/service proposition, product concept, price point positioning, marketing concept)
- Developed a range of tools to present the results at the travel agency level (consultations) and the hotel level
KEYLENS success levers:
Substantial methodological expertise in segmenting and modeling, combined with brand and positioning expertise in new product development
