Marketing by numbers

One marketing guru states without reservation that unless you are using at least 8 different marketing techniques then your marketing strategy needs an overhaul. He likes numbers - elsewhere it is 3 golden rules. Perhaps there are more pieces of advice reduced to a simple numeric headline. Of course this in itself is a good marketing technique - suggesting that there is a formula for success by following a prescribed series of steps. And of course it makes good attention grabbing headlines too. Of course the marketing practitioner has a range of techniques that can be deployed but it is not to say that because they all exist they should all be used.  A physician does not use every drug available but prescribes medication to address the diagnosed problem. Just because a business can advertise it doesn't mean that this is also the best use of the marketing budget. It is convenient to use metrics such as, the marketing budget should be set as a percentage of sales turnover. But consider two client examples where this was applied to divisions of large multi national businesses. In the first example the division had a significant turnover but only a few customers because in that business sector there were just a handful of players. But they had an advertising budget and wanted to run a campaign to use the budget. But this would have been unproductive - they knew all their customers and prospects already. Other marketing techniques to develop and sustain customer loyalty offered better returns. The second example was a company  where budgets were aligned to product sales. Again a problem because well established products enjoyed significant funding whereas new products that could in time evolve to replace these cash cows were underfunded. So the lesson is to devise a budget that is driven by a marketing strategy that in turn is designed to meet business objectives.  Marketing by numbers can obscure that goal, but marketing analysis can shine a light onto the real issues and indicate where budget should be invested.