Now more than ever, it is crucial for brands and businesses to get the most out of their marketing budget.
Competition is fierce, no matter what industry or market you are in, so what better time than now to set your goals and get to work?
After a difficult time for all, businesses are doing their best to reach consumers and meet their needs. So, to help you out, here are seven tips for meeting your marketing needs without breaking the bank.
1. Prioritise your budget
A common mistake for many businesses is not prioritising or reallocating budgets, opting for a more casual approach. Whilst this may work for some, ‘winging it’ can only last for so long and often ends up in wasting money, time and resources.
So, look at your business and focus on what needs to improve. What parts of your marketing plan are currently performing well and what needs a little extra work?
Set some goals and consider what needs to be done in order to achieve them. Once you’ve done this, decide where you need to prioritise your budget and take action.
When budgets are spent correctly, the leads that come in will be better informed and more qualified for your business and its needs.
2. Analytics
Analysing your business is paramount for its success. You need to know where it is going right and, more importantly, where it is going wrong.
Now, there are many analytical tools to help you measure your business’ results. Google Analytics is a prime example of a high quality ‘freemium’ service. Whilst there’s no cost for the standard service, you can upgrade and pay for more advanced features, dependent on your business and its needs.
This is a great way of keeping your marketing budget low, while still accessing all the information you need.
Google Analytics allows you to measure your return on investment as well as providing valuable insights and in-depth details about the visitors to your website.
The service automatically collects data, allows you to access detailed and customised reports, and helps you understand the social media channels you should be targeting, as well as the types of content you should be creating to suit your consumers’ needs.
Using analytics allows businesses to measure results, providing you with the knowledge you need to improve the performance of your website in pursuit of an increase in sales and conversions.
3. Search Engine Optimisation
If your business is online, which most are these days, then SEO is a great way to make you more visible in search engine results pages (SERPs) and then increase traffic to your website.
If you find you’re struggling to stand out from your competitors or competition is getting fiercer in your particular market, then SEO will soon be your new best friend.
Whether your business is heavy on content marketing or not, every business needs an element of SEO in order for the right audience and potential consumers to find them.
Rather than having lots of accidental visitors, SEO will ensure that those visiting your website are there because they want or need to be. When it is done correctly, SEO can provide quality backlinks and organic traffic and a better user experience.
SEO is a great way to get the most of our marketing budget as it is ensures that the leads you receive are better informed and more qualified.
4. Use complementary strategies
To make the very most of your marketing budget, it is wise to use a number of marketing strategies that complement one another and help the others out.
The strategies for each marketing discipline need to integrate and feed into each other in order to achieve the overarching objectives.
As mentioned above, SEO is a crucial part of a marketing strategy. There are a number of other tactics that support it. For example, content marketing will naturally enhance SEO and vice versa – each will help the other see even better results.
Your content team should communicate efficiently with other teams such as PR and social media. This will ensure that all the information that is published from the brand is relevant and in tune with one another.
5. Free trials
While it may be tempting to subscribe to every marketing tool that claims to be the best in the business, we recommend taking some time to try out a variety of different services first.
Many online tools and services offer a short-term free trial or even a basic package for free. Sign up to them and get to know them before committing to the monthly or annual bills. Compare similar services, try out the competitors and simply see which you prefer.
You may find that one works better for your business than you originally thought, or you may find that you need a more premium subscription package after all. We recommend comparing Hootsuite and Buffer for social media and Moz and SEMrush for SEO.
For email marketing, we recommend Mailchimp and HubSpot. Both of these tools offer a completely free service, and although slightly limited, it is a great way to compare the two, and see which best suits you and your brand.
6. Touchpoint Theory
The touchpoint theory is an important factor when it comes to running a successful business and making the most of your marketing strategy, in whatever capacity that may be.
The theory is built on taking your customers on a journey and providing them with the perfect customer experience before, during and after their purchase. Although the journey differs from company to company, the end goal remains the same; interactions lead to action, action leads to customers, which in turn leads to sales.
Use your marketing budget wisely and ensure that you deliver the right frequency and breadth of touchpoints to build awareness and gain the trust of potential consumers. Target them with enough and you will influence their purchasing decision and breed a sense of loyalty to your brand.
7. Outsource to an external agency
Outsourcing to an external agency that specialises in the areas you’d like to focus on could not only save you time, but money, too.
Some businesses may not have the budget to recruit specialists in house, therefore take advantage of using an agency to outsource experts for specific projects and campaigns.
External marketing agencies are experts in their field and know the ins and outs of everything that you might not. Agencies are fast-paced environments and able to deliver high quality work and expert advice to meet tight deadlines.
Working with an external agency will give you peace of mind that everything produced is accurate, without having to train yourselves to do it, which is also rather costly. This gives you more time and freedom to focus on other areas of the business.
Most agencies cover all aspects of a marketing strategy. So, it is wise to use their expert knowledge for all of your needs, if you are unable to do a task in house or if you would like a more specialist service.
The world we live in is changing at great pace. So, no matter its size, you really need to wring the absolute maximum out of your marketing budget.
Find out how we can help your business by contacting our team of marketing experts today!