I received a call the other day from a group wanting me to sponsor a local school by putting an ad on a poster that would be displayed in the windows of retail businesses. The sales person (not affiliated with the school, I found out when I pressed her for the name of her business) told me that thousands of people would see these posters and be drawn to my business if I would just agree to place an ad. I applauded her for getting the words out without laughing at the audacious comment she had just made! What she really wanted was a sponsorship that amounted to a charitable gift, not an advertising opportunity. This is the time of year when businesses are deluged with requests for sponsorships, charitable giving and involvement in civic groups. The decision and payment for this type of request typically falls to marketing. How do you respond to this type of request?

In the day in which we live, marketing budgets have been squeezed to cover the essentials. In the past few years of a down economy, business has changed a lot. There is a new normal that has everyone asking where efficiencies can be tweaked to become more cost-effective. It is not as if business has never been about efficiency; it most certainly has. It is just that we have had to redefine our business dealings to find the efficiencies or we would have gone out of business the past five years of recession followed by little growth. Gone are the robust budgets that kept businesses humming along and nonprofit organizations who benefited from generous corporations very happy. We have a new normal. That new normal impacts the way we go about marketing. For instance, the connection between marketing efforts and sales has been streamlined more now than ever. That includes the efforts you put into marketing your particular product offerings. It also includes the organizations and events you attend under the marketing banner. If you cannot draw a line between the things you are doing to market your company and the cash register, then you should reconsider whether you should be doing them. This is the new normal.

But what about taking a longer view of marketing? Building relationships, establishing corporate goodwill, creating strategic charitable alliances and the like all take a lot longer to trace to any kind of net gain. Yes they do, but it does not mean that the line cannot be traced between these activities and the money. During the late summer and fall months, there are a lot of business activities around the groups that are bought and paid for with marketing dollars. Here is a suggestion. Do an audit of the groups with which you are involved, either through direct involvement or monetary giving (or both), and categorize them into one of these groups:

1. Groups where I am networking directly with clients or potential clients

2. Trade or regulatory groups where my company would benefit from having influence

3. Groups or events where my customers are deeply involved and I need to have a presence

4. Civic or charitable groups and opportunities where my involvement makes a statement that my company is a good corporate citizen

In the first group, you can make a case that you are impacting the bottom line of your company because you are dealing directly with customers and prospects. The next two groups may be harder to draw a line to the net profit of your company, but it can be done. When you consider the influence you have over decision makers, this becomes a case for retaining the business of your current customers and keeping them coming back for more. The fourth group is even harder to connect to the bottom line. Is goodwill marketing still important? Yes, marketing is about bolstering and protecting the company brand, but this is where the new normal and the old way of doing marketing can conflict. For most companies, goodwill groups dominate their involvement. (In fact, if you find that most of your current involvement is in group 4, you should consider cutting back.) In the new normal, goodwill should be done in conjunction with one of the other three groups. For instance, if you are doing a golf outing for a charity, make sure the event is filled with customers and potential customers. If you are joining the Chamber of Commerce, make sure your local Chamber has plenty of opportunities to connect you with decision makers in your local economy. Also make sure there is plenty of opportunity for you to get to the top of these types of organizations. Your involvement should elevate your corporation in the eyes of the other members. There is nothing wrong with supporting a cause as an organization. In fact, it is a wonderful thing to do. But I would urge you to define your heartfelt cause and stick with it. Where companies get in trouble is where they have left this open ended and the requests never end. In the new normal, it is as important as ever to put some boundaries around cause marketing.