Most small businesses are looking for ways to maximize their marketing dollars. Here are five strategies for making the most of your budget.
1. Stick With What Works
There’s no time limit on utilizing a great campaign. If your current advertising and marketing strategy is effective, continue to run with it. If your audience is reading and reacting to your content there’s no reason to switch things up. However, if the concept is working but the information is dated, simply edit the copy with updated material. The same holds true for illustrations, photos and layouts. Recycling content from one promotion to be used throughout other campaigns will reduce cost. Layouts, headlines and concepts rejected for one project may easily be used in future promotions, e-mail campaigns and ads.
2. Don’t Try To Be Something You’re Not
Fortune 500 companies may distribute elaborate four-color, gold embossed brochures but you don’t need to go that route in order to attract customers. Those businesses have the capital and are able to spend an excessive amount on advertising. Small businesses need to keep their potential customers in mind when determining how to best represent themselves. The look, tone and image of your website and marketing materials should effectively represent your product and brand; otherwise you risk confusing the consumer.
3. Analyze Your Digital Presence
The first order of business is to determine if your digital presence is well optimized or has areas of weakness. Local SEO has become one of the primary drivers for small businesses to be found on the web. With mobile becoming the primary means of consumers finding products and services in a geographic area, businesses need to pay close attention to their information across the web and how changes to Google’s local pack results affect them. As Flagstone Digital Marketing points out. Google changed their local seven pack to only three listings on most search results at the end of 2015. This is most likely because only “three results fit on a mobile screen. By changing all local searches to the three-pack, Google created the same user experience whether you’re using mobile or desktop.” Local SEO is a budget friendly area to pay close attention to and increase your visibility to customers actively searching for a business like yours. As always, if your budget allows, the expertise of a seasoned digital agency will pay off tremendously in the end.
4. Explore Inexpensive Lead Generation
Often overlooked, it’s absolutely possible to generate new leads via low cost banner advertising, organic search and through low to no cost PR efforts. These strategies focus primarily on number of leads, not establishing recognition or image building. Economically speaking, organic search is the most cost effective means of generating traffic and leads. The best starting point to optimizing your website and creating content that attracts leads is to conduct keyword research. By providing value to people using relevant search queries those consumers will be more apt to contact you to purchase your product or services.
5. Don’t Overpay For Creative Talent
Consider hiring consultants and freelancers who make the most sense from a financial perspective. You don’t need to employ the best of the best if the task at hand doesn’t require that level of skill. There are plenty of talented photographers, writers, web designers and consultants available who can achieve the desired outcome for a reasonable fee. On another cost savings note, by working with local or new talent, you may be able to score a discount and create a long-term relationship with better service and fairer prices on future collaborative endeavors. In fact, you might even be able to tackle your project in-house and save even more if you focus your marketing dollars on talent only when their expertise is absolutely required.
Following these tips will help your business thrive and ensure your hard earned marketing resources are utilized in the most efficient way possible.