Perhaps the most fundamental piece of marketing wisdom that I can offer anyone is that marketing is to business what gasoline is to a car: you only need it if you want to go someplace. As such, the cost of marketing like – that of gasoline – is relative to the importance of the trip. If you’re thinking about going for a Sunday drive the price to fill up the tank might make you consider walking instead. But if you have to get your child to the Emergency Room I’m guessing that the price of gas is the last thing on your mind.

With gas at $4.50 a gallon, this analogy is even more relevant to the discussion of marketing, because almost everything that is connected to the marketing of a business or a service costs money. Some marketing tools are more expensive than others, but whether it’s a lot of money, or only a little depends on two things: what it is you’re marketing and how important it is to you to make the market aware of your product or service.

I can put this very simply, or as my old Creative Director used to say, “You have to spend a nickel to make a dime.” For those you who are metaphor challenged this shouldn’t be taken literally in that spending a penny doesn’t automatically yield two cents. My point here is that marketing is about creating and maintaining a stream of customers. If such is important to your business then the cost of marketing bears a direct relation to the survival of your business. To close the metaphor loop here, marketing is as discretionary to business as gasoline is to a car.

Still, I’ve run into many businesses who claim not to need marketing. They tell me that they get all their business through referrals and marketing is unneeded. If this is true, I’ll bet it wasn’t always the case. How about when they began their business? I’m sure that they called everyone they knew to announce their new enterprise. Perhaps they ran ads, sent out post cards, were active in their local Chamber of Commerce. In short, they got the word out.

Now their business is chugging merrily along, with little effort beyond answering the phone and providing whatever it is the caller wants. If their income is exceeding your expenses, they’re sitting pretty. Perhaps some marketing might be able to increase their sales, but would the increased income cancel out the marketing costs? They’d have to experiment to find out. Many businesses lucky enough to reach this plateau choose to cut back on most if not all marketing cost so that they can enjoy even more profit. In other words, they ease up on the gas and coast counting on referrals and their current client base to keep things rolling. This can work…for a while.

However the road ahead is always unpredictable and the twists and turns are rarely well marked. Honestly, most companies that choose to coast aren’t stupid. The mistake they make is thinking that road ahead is the same the road behind them and – if needed – they can instantly ramp up their marketing as easy as turning the key and restarting the engine.

They are almost always wrong. In the interval since they last did any marketing competitors have filled the void, customers tastes have changed, or new products were created to better meet consumer needs. Sometimes it’s all three. The annuals of business are chock full of once thriving businesses that are no longer in business because while they were coasting on their referrals the bridge ahead just around the bend had washed out.

If that’s happened to you, you may not have the time or resources you need to create and disseminate an effective marketing message. There is no such thing as “turn-key” marketing. There are no quick fixes, slam dunks, or silver bullets in marketing. The best slogan, logo, ad, spot, direct mail piece or website is useless unless lots of people who have an interest in what you’re offering see it. That’s the real cost of marketing…the awareness. The marketing tools – slogans, spots, logos, ads, etc. – cost peanuts compared to the cost of awareness.

And then there’s the factor of time. The best marketing message projected by the most effective medium to the most willing audience still takes time to produce the desired interest, action and result.

Coasting is easy and for the short term may be more profitable than putting money into marketing until you loose your momentum. My best advice is keep your tank full, and your eyes on focused on the road ahead.