As promised, bazaar has returned this month with Loaay Ahmed’s Two Cents column, linking readers’ queries on financial woes with Loaay’s expertise in business consulting. Economic downturns have been the space in which many novel ideas for survival have been born. In this space, Loaay shares a few pointers.

Reader’s question:

My marketing budget is under a lot of pressure at the moment from my Finance Director. How can I prove to him that cutting the marketing budget is the WRONG thing to do now?

LA: If your name was Jean-Pierre, and you spoke French to Yan, the Chinese young man working at Starbucks in Beijing, and you ask him whether or not their milk is organic, would you expect Yan to understand you well enough to give you the right answer? The answer is NO. Citizens of Planet Marketing have always struggled with the simple fact that the Finance Race is a completely different species that lives on Planet Show Me the Money. Since their planet is closer to the Sun than yours, you need to get closer to them to enjoy prosperity. You’re probably thinking, “I don’t know ‘Financic’, the secret language of Finance.” Relax, it’s easier than learning Chinese.

Your Finance Director understands numbers. From his point of view, when sales are decreasing, or not increasing at best, he needs to reduce cost to minimize the damage. Words like campaigns, creativity, gut-feel decisions, etc, translate to more uncalculated risk, more expenses and less profit in his mind. The entire business world, globally speaking, made a fatal mistake a long time ago by putting Marketing under ‘Expenses’. Rent and auto lease are expenses. Marketing Budget is an asset. Why? Because, unlike rent and your delivery van lease, Marketing – when done correctly – helps generate revenue. That is the definition of an investment. This statement can cause more arguments with your FD, so I wouldn’t recommend opening with that. However, the purpose is to make you, Marketing, understand the kind of mindset you need to maintain.

Show him last year’s data. Highlight revenue drop when you spent less than usual or when you stopped completely for whatever reason. Most likely, the data will show a parallel relationship. Next, paint a dark picture in his mind about how revenue can be worse than now if you stop your Marketing activities or reduce them to an ineffective level. On the other side, explain how you need their help in making the budget more ‘accountable’ by using metrics to measure the Marketing ROI. Don’t worry; they know how to calculate these. By demonstrating your commitment to work together and to be more responsible for the budget, Finance will come around. Worst case: you’ll have your budget reduced, but not killed.

Reader’s question:

I’ve been reading a lot about this new idea of “social media” marketing. Can it work here in Kuwait?

LA: A lot of Marketing Professionals say that the rules of Marketing have changed because now customers are in the driver’s seat. In The good old days, when businesses showed off their products and services, and customers invaded their showrooms to buy, are gone. I don’t see that Marketing rules have changed. What happened is that Marketers have finally realized that their brand’s glory doesn’t come from how great they believe it is, but from the reaction of their customers. Think of it like art. Regardless of how talented an artist may be, if the public doesn’t agree, the artist will most likely end up working with Yan (see above) to pay rent. What’s going on now is that technology is giving customers more tools to express themselves and influence each other.

Social Media has many uses and it’s defiantly not for every brand. If your brand wants to be active in Social Media, then make it clear that you’re in it for the right reasons. For example, use Twitter.com to update your customers who follow your tweets about latest offers, important upgrades, service failures, handling urgent complaints, etc. Remember that tweets are instant. If you use it for handling complaints, make sure that you’re available online to at least acknowledge their problem, and to work on fixing it immediately. Otherwise, don’t offer that particular kind of support and use twitter for something else. I don’t see facebook.com as important as it used to be, but it’s another form of communication to ‘listen’ to customers more than to ‘talk’ to customers.

In general, if your main target audience is below 35 years old and is active online, Social Media could be useful. If they’re older, they could be using the Internet on a simple level or are not even active online at all. It all comes down to what’s convenient for your customers; not what’s doable to you…and that’s just my two cents.