FORECASTING SEASON!

We're approaching mid-September, which means it is FORECASTING SEASON!

During FORECASTING SEASON, there are easy fixes, and there are hard fixes. Somebody will run a forecast and get this as a result.

This business is contracting. The business needs to be fixed. Somewhere, somebody in Finance looks like this:

This brings us back to the topic of easy fixes and hard fixes. People avoid hard fixes. People embrace easy fixes. Easy fixes happen in Marketing. "What if you increased your paid search budget by 20% per year, does the business grow?"

Here you see tradeoffs ... you give up more than a million dollars of profit in the short-term, then the business improves in the long-term.

And ... the core issue isn't solved here ... spending 20% more on paid search just mitigates the sales decline somewhat, but it is still there.

During FORECASTING SEASON it's our job to get these scenarios out there. Flood the airwaves with Marketing Budget Experiments designed to help our Leaders understand (well ahead of time) what various "solutions" actually solve.

P.S.:  There is a difference between most "brands" and those who embrace FORECASTING SEASON. Those who embrace it believe in something. They're working toward something. Maybe their approach is full of red-tape, but they are working toward something. Why do I bring this up? Well, last night I posted something on LinkedIn asking my readers what is their overriding marketing principle that they do not budge from (mine would be the importance of Customer Acquisition). Here's a link to what I wrote. As of press time, the article has been viewed 411 times and has ZERO likes and ZERO comments. If I write something like "Macy's Bizarre Omnichannel Strategy" I'll have 15-25 likes and a half-dozen comments with enough thought leadership to fill a conference agenda ... and it is meaningless nonsense, all of it. Ask the reader to share what they stand for, and not a single reader can do that? My goodness. Those of you who embrace FORECASTING SEASON stand for something ... you are trying to ward off trouble in the future by addressing trouble today. That matters.