Where’s the milk?

Visited a very posh tea shop today (I am not going to name it to avoid embarassment). The owners had clearly invested significant money in creating a fantastic ambience to position the venue as an upmarket tea shop for a genuine dining experience. Now granted the cakes were fantastic and the tea top drawer. However, they forgot some important basics. The tea arrived (leaves and tea strainer to boot), but no milk. The cakes arrived with posh forks, but no plates. And, there was no clotted cream for the cream tea! There is an important lesson here….don’t forget the basics. A lot of good work was undone by failure to get the simple things right. Are you getting the basics right in your marketing and business development activity? Are you focussed on the right stuff?

Focus on ROI not your Marketing Budget

Is it just me or do you share my angst about people focussing on marketing budgets when they should be thinking about ROI?

Size 10 1/2 Boots is like any other business in looking closer at expenditure as the recession bites. However, we are continuing to invest in marketing activity where we can see a payback on investment. Now more than any other time businesses need to be highly visible and work harder to get cut-through amongst the noise in the market place. Better surely to evaluate potential marketing activity vs return on investment (ROI) than respond with a knee-jerk, “we dont have the budget”, isnt it?