Rebalancing Marketing Assets for Greater Market Impact

by: Mark DeBellis, President, PSB Integrated Marketing

The importance of effective marketing efforts has never been greater. With funding for quality marketing at a premium, leaders must think strategically to apply limited resources appropriately.

A major issue facing senior executives today is determining the right balance between in-house and outsourced resources.

Over the past few years a “do it myself” mentality has developed in the credit union industry. When this inclination is combined with the widespread availability of desktop technology and “soft” services, many institutions have expanded their in-house marketing resources to include non-strategic and non-traditional responsibilities … potentially at the expense of increased impact in the marketplace.

Many of these in-house activities (design, copywriting, PR, web design) have historically been serviced by outside specialists. The outside agency firms are expert practitioners that generally bring greater overall resources, experience and depth to an opportunity.

Rebalancing your marketing assets means focusing the budget you have against the right marketing outcome and output. Outsourcing can be a dynamic tool to rebalancing your assets and generating greater impact in the marketplace.

Do you need to rebalance your marketing assets?

The first thing to do is assess your current costs for both fixed marketing overhead and variable marketing expenses. Then answer the question, “How much of my total marketing expense is being used to cover inside overhead versus outside impact (impressions in the market – mail, print campaigns, adwords, etc.)?” What is the ratio of your “marketing overhead” to total marketing budget?

While there is no industry benchmark available, your goal should be to create the greatest impact on the outside efforts with the least consumption in overhead. Market share is grown through external efforts – advertising, direct mail, events and business development efforts.

Keeping your eye on this ratio helps to add perspective to your marketing efficiency and ultimately ensures you are allocating adequate resources to the areas that generate results.

Mark DeBellis has spent over half of his life in the Marketing profession and in the promotion and management of consumer brands and services. He seeks new ways to provide value-added services and product marketing strategies for PSB’s financial service clients. As a full-service provider, PSB Integrated Marketing offers creative concepts, graphic design and layout, in-house prepress, and on-site lithographic/digital printing, bindery in addition to secured mail house services in their Orange County, CA facility. Mark DeBellis is President of PSB Integrated Marketing and can be reached at markd@psbonline.com; www.psbonline.com