When is the right time to Invest in marketing?

Now of course!

But only a handful of companies that we talk to initially understand this simple fact - the rest fall into one of two camps:

a) I am doing OK at the moment and so I don't need to spend any money on marketing.

b) I am really struggling, creditors are all over me, I need to do some marketing to get more sales quickly, but I haven't any money left to pay for it - can you help?

The problem with the a) businesses is that they all too often turn into the b) businesses - and in the case of small to medium sized companies surprisingly quickly, and in the current financial turmoil digging those companies back out again is incredibly difficult.

Over the last couple of months we have spoken again to a number of companies who a year or so ago didn't want anything to do with us as they were "too busy with existing business". They have been caught out by the rapid demise in their markets and have now left it too late to react. Unfortunately in a number of these cases there is nothing we could do for them and the owners have lost their business and their livelihood. In a few other cases we have helped the business owner to find some financial backing to start and rebuild, but it's a long road back.

So - don't be one of the casualties - if you are doing OK at the moment, take some of that profit and invest it in growing your business now. There are some golden opportunities to be grasped at this time which most likely won't be around in a years time or so.

Risk share, reward share

In these times of continuing economic uncertainly, at Red Splash we are seeing a number of business owners that still want to invest in marketing and development activities to grow their company but are procrastinating as they weigh up the risk of making that investment over retaining the money in their business.

Investing wisely at this time can reap dividends that would not be possible in more economically buoyant times and the way to take the risk out of that investment is to undertake rigorous due diligence and research and test ideas fully.

Not all businesses are in a position to do this due diligence and research in-house though and many more do not possess the skills to develop and ruthlessly execute the business development activities required to grasp the opportunity.

We have become acutely aware of this as we have recently seen a number of companies where there was clearly an opportunity for them to grow but despite our best efforts they have not been able to bring themselves to make the required investment, at least not yet and the opportunity may be gone before they do.

Last week, in our board meeting, we decided to take a bold step and for the first time offer our prospective clients a risk sharing model as an option to our normal fee model – in fact we prefer to call it a reward sharing model. If we are convinced that there is indeed a real opportunity for business growth within a current or prospective client, then with the right measures in place we will share in the investment of undertaking the detailed research, developing the plans and executing the activities in return for an agreed slice of the success.

We are now talking to a number of companies about this new model and it has been warmly received - we believe that the recent economic turmoil has thrown up a real opportunity for Red Splash that was not there a year or so ago and we are now investing in that – the timing to step up a gear in our own business may never be better.

Business growth

Welcome to my blog. As a Director of Red Splash (www.red-splash.com), a company that specialises in helping small to medium sized businesses to grow, I come across a multitude of interesting projects and stories and this blog is to share some of those with you. They will range from the informative, to the educational to the plain amusing...