Budget and Invest

When you’re running a business, working in any kind of managerial role, or simply taking decisions on behalf of one, you have a crucial task of choosing where to spend resources to get the best results for the smallest investment possible.

One example is being entrusted with the resources of a marketing agency. Those resources might literally be money, work-hours of the team you’re managing, the reputation of your company, or even personal favors built up over time.

You need to make shrewd use of these resources, putting them into projects that bring in a bigger return. This doesn’t just mean profit. One of the most important things you can do is to start recognizing more indirect gains – from building a reputation for quality with your customers, spending money to build in risk avoidance systems that reduce loss from future projects, and avoiding false economies. Seeing the bigger picture is vital as you rate your decision making and account for it in front of others.

One of the most important factors at work here is the use of data to inform each decision you make. Using research on your own company as well as from market research agencies such as Attest, you can approach choices with confidence about what your consumers want, the extent to which they’ll trust your brand, and exactly what you can do to get it to them.

It ensures you’ll avoid problems such as over-promising. This can cause long-term harm in your company, losing trust and driving away loyal, repeat customers that success is founded on. With good data, you can start to predict the outcome of your choices – allowing you to steer towards good results and away from bad ones.

It’s important that your research and data gathering looks back as well as forward. Don’t just walk away from a project, especially if it’s gone badly (or at least, not as planned). Review your decisions, look at where your expectations differed from reality and try to work out why.

You might need to make some personal changes if your preconceptions are causing to allocate resources wastefully, or change your data gathering and analysis techniques to better your ability to predict how your choices will turn out and make sure you’re making the right ones.