Marketers struggle daily to achieve more with an ever-diminishing budget, even though more is always needed.

The strategies employed with smaller budgets, what to do, and what to measure are paramount.

To make matters even harder, many marketers try to market a business without a clear business vision or business strategy in place:

- What is the purpose of the company
- What does it believe
- How will it behave
- Where will it play, and how will it win
- What is its competitive advantage
- What capabilities and systems are in place to deliver to customers

Look around your category, and you'll see a sea of sameness. Clarifying your value and competitive advantage will help move you away from being another commodity fighting on price. What is your value? How do you grow your appeal to create pricing power?

The above must be in place, lived and embraced internally, and easy to articulate for a marketer to do effective marketing, especially with a smaller budget.

The crucial question then arises: Where should I concentrate my marketing efforts to make the most significant positive impact on helping the business achieve its short and long-term ambitions?

Decades of experience have repeatedly shown that most people try to do too many things, and 99% of businesses need more money to do even half of them to an average standard when we should be aiming much higher.

What then to do?

I'd give serious thought to the following:

- What is your company's reason for being (your promise to the customer)?
- What is your competitive advantage?
- What can you raise, eliminate, reduce, or create to give new value to the customer and, in turn, the business?
- What are the benefits (functional and emotional) you deliver, as that is what customers care about and what you should communicate?
- What brand platform/idea can you create that presents your purpose and competitive advantage in a way that is different, distinctive and hard to ignore?
- Remember, most of what brands communicate is ignored
- How can you use creativity to bring that platform to life to connect with future and current buyers?
- Remember, you do not have enough money to be dull or the same as everyone else, so do something different.
- How can you say less loudly and as often as possible?
- How can you be consistent and wear things in?
- What should you measure to show it's working and advocate for a bigger budget to make it even more effective?

I can help you with all of the above, and if leadership still needs to do its role in setting the strategy, let them know I can help them, too.

Getting the strategy right first matters greatly.

From there, I can introduce you to trusted partners in research, design, creative, production, web, apps, software, PR, media and measurement if needed, but never if you don't.

It shouldn't need to feel like you're banging your head against the wall.