I’ve always disliked long titles to articles and blog posts. They tend to lack creativity and fail to engage. Odds are most will skip over this entry when they receive it in their inbox. Who has the time to read a long thing before reading an even longer thing? Yet despite knowing long titles are problematic, there’s a twelve-word title at the head of this post because it says all the things I feel are important. In essence, I’ve shoved a bunch of stuff into a single title and in doing so risked getting my message to you.
I say we fix it. Let’s try:
Maximization Through Customization: Getting the Most Out of Your Marketing Budget
We dropped a word, which is a okay, but now it doesn’t really mean the same thing. We need the term “digital” because those are the primary activities we’ll be covering. Let’s try again:
Maximization Through Customization: Optimizing Your Digital Marketing Budget
We dropped three more words! Oh, but we added another big word with a “z”. Too many concepts to inhale at once? Will all those z’s put people to sleep? One more time:
Optimizing Your Digital Marketing Budget Through Customization
We dropped another word and now we’re down to seven. Things are going pretty well in that regard. Only, it feels a little drab and the word “customization” is a lot of concept that feels like it’s weighing down the tail. Shorter isn’t always better if the end result is boring half your audience and overwhelming the other half. Last time:
Optimizing Your Digital Marketing Budget
Five words, message simplified, rolls off the tongue. Is it perfect? In my view, it lacks a smile, one of the core concepts, and incorporates a well-worn buzzword – optimization – that in a fresh context could obfuscate the digital landscape. What I’ll need to do is highlight how that word ties into the concept of customization and how it’s become so vital to our digital marketing activities that it should be written on stickies all over the office. Better yet, if I can present an example by optimizing the word power in the title of the blog post, maybe I can even better illustrate my point.
🙂
If digital marketing – particularly in the industrial and manufacturing marketplaces – is still a mistrusted term it’s because too few B-2-B companies are carefully customizing their approach and content to suit their markets. The efficacy of sweeping programs that cast wide nets is difficult to track and often miss their mark. Also, sending the same message in the same way over every platform doesn’t always work. Putting a few tightly-scheduled dollars into the right social media platforms to cover trade shows and other, mostly anecdotal content makes sense. Yet, the same doesn’t work with Google AdWords campaigns where more direct approaches are necessary to match the right searches.
Investing in a measured mix of digital programs requires the ability to more meticulously utilize one’s marketing resources. Agency pricing that locks you into a broad range of activities over a set period of time might yield some results in the short term but the waste will drain your company’s potential for growth. An agency that understands these dangers will price their services in small, adjustable increments with no minimums, and clearly allocate a percentage of your budget for trial and error which will help eliminate ROI panic as long as spending equals learning. 
Most importantly, optimizing your budget requires a marketing partner who will get in the trenches with you, learn your markets and help you devise the right tactics to reach them. They’ll share the risk and stand by your side by cutting waste and leaving only the leanest muscle to pull the weight. In short, like a good fund manager, a good marketing partner watches every penny and only succeeds when you do.
– S. Norton
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