To make next year’s budget support both the short and long term for your brand, you must be able to answer two questions:

1) How large is my pool of “receptive consumers” – those who are receptive to marketing investment in my brand?
2) What form of investment in my brand – product, A&P, pricing, distribution, other – are they most receptive to?

The answers to these questions will tell you where increasing investment will result in both a big, profitable volume response and a sizeable bump up in your longer-term brand equity. Just as important, they’ll tell you where and how you are overinvesting in your brand. This is the key to unlocking funds for increasing investment without having to trade-off next year’s margin for more growth.