5 easy ways to stretch your marketing budget Without actually putting more money into it.
No matter how much you have in your Marketing budget, more would always be nice to have. Without actually putting more money into it, there are some ways to stretch your marketing budget and increase your return on investment. We’re going to talk you through five ways you can make the most of what you have, without making massive changes.
Know your marketing goals
What do you want to achieve from your marketing efforts? X amount of website traffic, X amount of sales X amount of people coming into your store, X number of new customers. These are some of the things you need to think about even before you set your Marketing budget.
Knowing the outcomes you are striving for, will give your plans direction and remove any non-essential spending that will not aid in achieving what you have mapped out.
Know your ideal customer
If you don’t know exactly who you are marketing to, your marketing budget isn’t being spent effectively. Creating target audiences and personas before you set off on your marketing journey will provide you with more focus on where to find customers and how to attract them.
Now you may be inclined to say that everyone is your target audience, you want to be able to sell to everyone, but take some time to think about who your ideal customer is and who actually buys your products and engages with your business. There is likely to be a commonality among them that you can tap into, allowing you to focus on a smaller group before you invest more money into marketing. By doing this, you will see more conversions as the people you target will be more interested in what you are offering.
Test and measure repeatedly
- How do you know something is working, if you aren’t measuring it?
- How do you know something else would work better if you don’t test it?
While sticking to what you know works might be tempting, chances are there is something out there that works even better, for the same price. Testing and measuring may mean you invest more time, but you could find a tactic that creates more leads and customers, and therefore higher profits.
Explore inexpensive lead generation alternatives
Not all Marketing requires a financial investment – sometimes it just takes your time! And while time is money, you should already be spending some time on your marketing efforts. To really focus your time, try to create what is known as ‘evergreen’ content – pieces of content that stand the test of time and are relevant all year round. By doing this, you’ll have great content that you can pull from and promote whenever you need.
Some simple and inexpensive ideas you could test and measure include:
- Email newsletters to existing customers
- Social media marketing
- Handwritten postcards
Do it yourself
Do you know the strengths of each of your team members? Maybe you have an employee who is great at writing, dabbles in design work or practices photography on the side. By leveraging these skills that are already in-house, you can reduce your investment in expensive external agencies. If you don’t have any team members you can delegate to, there are plenty of tools that can help you along the way. Canva.com is fantastic for design work, even if you aren’t a designer! Writing tools like Grammerly and Hemingway Editor help to improve your writing skills by suggesting edits that take it to the next level. Take a look at what you currently outsource and make a note of the tasks that you can do in-house… it might surprise you.
Stretching your Marketing budget doesn’t have to be complicated or involve a lot of shuffling around of allocated funds. It can be as simple as giving your marketing more direction, creating more content in-house and finding what really works for your business. If you aren’t sure how your marketing stacks up, try the free Marketing Strategy Test to find the areas you do best, and what needs some work. Speak to a Business Growth Specialist and make your marketing work for you.
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