News
 How
to Budget for Database Marketing Programs
By M. H. “Mac” McIntosh
Companies with mature database marketing programs
budget less than half of their funding toward image,
awareness and sales lead generation programs. But
this approach could be a big mistake.
Most b-to-b marketers appear to spend 90-95 percent
of their budget on image, awareness and sales lead
generation programs, and only 5-10 percent on
database marketing. I think this budgeting approach
is dead wrong.
Instead, if you are new to database marketing
consider spending approximately 70-75 percent of
your marketing budget for image, awareness and sales
lead generation programs. Then spend 15-20 percent
of your budget to fund database marketing programs
designed to nurture prospects until they qualify or
buy, and spend the remaining 5-10 percent to target
existing customers for retention and sales of other
products or services, upgrades and add-ons.
Companies with mature database marketing
programs—especially those who have been able to
track and measure the increased sales that resulted
from marketing programs aimed at their
databases—often wind up budgeting less than half of
their funding towards image, awareness and sales
lead generation programs. Why? Because they find
that they don’t need to spend as much on those
objectives when they are also using database
marketing programs to talk directly to sub-sets of
their market.
These mature database marketers use the other half
or more of their budget for funding marketing
communications programs aimed directly at their
databases of suspects, prospects and customers.
Targeted, orchestrated, repetitive campaigns
designed to identify and nurture prospects and talk
to customers, maximizing the sales opportunities
they represent.
Image, awareness and sales lead generation programs
maintain a strong role, but sales lead generation
programs work best alongside strong database
marketing programs. Both aspects are important to
having top-performing direct marketing solutions.
--- M. H. “Mac” McIntosh is president of Mac
McIntosh Inc., a sales and marketing consulting firm
specializing in helping companies get more
high-quality sales leads and turning them into
sales.
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