IMAGE: GETTY IMAGES - RICHARD DRURY
Imagine tending a fire to keep your family warm through a long British winter. You need a place to build it, fuel to burn, heat, air and perhaps a few friends to share it with. Now imagine that fire is your business. It’s what keeps your team working, your customers returning, and your future possible.
If you don’t know where your next log is coming from, or worse, you’re expecting another one to just roll down the hill, then the fire will inevitably fade. That is what happens every time a business underinvests in sales and marketing. The flames don’t die suddenly; they dim gradually. Enquiries drop, lead quality cools, margins slip, slower months turn into normal months, and by the time you feel the chill, the fire is already out.
THE TEMPTATION TO LET THE FIRE BURN LOW
Cutting back on marketing remains one of the most common “easy savings” in UK businesses. You can’t trim rent, you can’t trim insurance, and HMRC won’t give you a seasonal discount. Marketing, though, feels intangible and therefore expendable. But the UK data is unequivocal: reducing marketing spend rarely saves money, it simply shifts the cost into the future, where it becomes dramatically more expensive.
Barclays’ SME Outlook Report found that small businesses that invested consistently in marketing were forty-two per cent more likely to report revenue growth than those who held back. The Chartered Institute of Marketing has repeatedly highlighted that only around a quarter of UK SMEs invest at what it considers a healthy level for growth. In other words, most aren’t saving money by underinvesting; they’re quietly starving the future of their business.
The financial impact of that underinvestment is well understood in the UK effectiveness world. The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising has shown time and again, across more than two decades of case studies, that when a brand’s “share of voice” drops, its “share of market” follows. UK brands that reduce their visibility typically see market share decline within six to twelve months, a pattern that repeats across categories. In specialist or heritage-driven sectors, such as gunmaking, shooting grounds or luxury accessories, the effect is even faster. Once a brand becomes quiet, it becomes forgettable, and once forgettable, it becomes replaceable.
HOW UNDERINVESTMENT STARVES THE FLAMES OF GROWTH
Underinvesting also drives up customer acquisition costs. Brands that step back from marketing don’t suddenly discover a new efficiency; they simply make every future sale more expensive to generate. A weakened brand must rely on discounting, aggressive promotions or a larger paid media footprint just to stand still. The Advertising Association and WARC have shown that UK brands which “go dark” for extended periods face sharply higher customer acquisition costs and, critically, often require two to three times the spend later to rebuild the awareness they lost by cutting back. The short-term saving becomes a long-term penalty.
Just as damaging is what happens to pricing power. The IPA and WARC’s UK Effectiveness Databank consistently finds that brands underinvesting in long-term marketing suffer reduced consumer trust, greater price sensitivity and a growing reliance on margin-eroding promotions. By contrast, brands that maintain sustained, visible brand-building activity are far more likely to defend or even increase premium pricing. In sectors like ours, where quality, heritage and expertise define value, losing that pricing power is not a minor issue, it is the difference between a brand that endures and a brand that slowly withers.
There is also the issue of perception. In the UK market, silence is rarely interpreted as strategic. The AA/WARC Trust in Advertising workstream has repeatedly highlighted that when brands fall quiet, consumers assume the business is struggling, losing relevance or simply no longer competing at the same level. Salience, the likelihood that a customer even thinks of you, erodes quickly, and once salience drops, consideration follows. For industries built on reputation, such as the shooting trade, this is a direct threat. If you’re not present, you’re not chosen. If you’re not chosen, you’re not viable.
STARTING A FIRE IS HARDER THAN KEEPING IT GOING
One of the most important UK insights from the Advertising Association and WARC is that recovery is dramatically more expensive than maintenance. Brands that stop advertising, even briefly, typically require between double and triple the future spend to regain the ground they lost. Once the fire goes out, you don’t simply add another log. You need kindling, patience, airflow and significantly more fuel than you would ever have needed to keep the fire alive in the first place.
THE AMOUNT OF FUEL DEPENDS ON THE KIND OF FIRE
So, what does “adequate investment” look like for a UK business? While every category is different, the UK’s own marketing institutions offer clear benchmarks. For established B2C brands, eight to twelve per cent of annual revenue invested in marketing is considered healthy. Challenger brands typically push closer to ten to fifteen per cent. For SMEs, especially those under five million in turnover, the CIM and DMA suggest roughly seven to ten per cent. Across all categories, businesses investing less than five per cent are generally classified as underinvesting unless they operate in tightly regulated markets with captive demand.
The balance of spending matters, too. The well-known sixty–forty rule, sixty per cent on brand building, forty per cent on sales activation, was developed entirely from UK effectiveness data and remains the most reliable formula for long-term growth.
THE GUN TRADE MUST STAY ALIGHT
These numbers matter because the shooting trade is uniquely vulnerable to underinvestment. We rely on reputation, heritage and long purchase cycles. We work in a small market where trust and familiarity define success. Competition is increasing as the market contracts. And customers, whether buyers of guns, lessons, accessories or country sport experiences, cannot choose what they do not see. Underinvesting in sales and marketing is not simply a budgeting choice; it is a risk.
Marketing is fuel. Sales is the heat. Brand building is the oxygen that keeps the whole thing alive. And your people are the ones gathered around it, feeling the warmth, or the cold. Without a steady supply of fuel, leads cool, margins contract, competitors catch up, customers drift and morale drops. The fire rarely goes out all at once. It dies slowly, quietly, and then suddenly all at once.
The real cost of underinvesting in marketing isn’t in what you save today.
It’s in everything you lose once the fire has gone out.
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monty@mk38.co.uk
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