If like most small businesses you’re juggling a modest marketing budget, you’ll know how vital it is to make every pound count. In the face of reduced budgets, the challenge for marketers is to find ways to become more efficient.
Spending more money on marketing isn’t always the answer; sometimes, optimising the budget you already have and thinking smarter about how to get more out of your marketing spend can yield better results. So where to start?
Have a budget
This may sound obvious, but you can’t stretch a budget that doesn’t exist. Too many businesses want to rely on organic marketing and cheap or free marketing tactics. Instead, try focusing on investing in the right marketing activities that really impact your bottom line. If you want your company to grow, marketing is one of the first places you should be looking to spend money.
Aim for zero-waste
Is every item in your budget absolutely necessary? How many activities are being rinsed and repeated, just because you’ve always done them – are they still contributing to your objectives? That monthly magazine subscription, the freelancer retainer you don’t really utilise… be brutal. If you are not getting a return on investment, ditch it and either enjoy the saving or reallocate the money elsewhere.
Identify and focus on what works best
Investing your resources in the activities that demonstrate the best return is a must, especially if you’re working with a stretched budget.
Considering scrapping an old promotion?
First, check if it’s still performing and if it is, keep it running for as long as your customers read and react to it. If a campaign still has selling power but it’s looking a bit tired, refresh existing copy – don’t throw it out and waste time starting from scratch.
Something not working?
By all means, experiment to see if you can achieve a better ROI – perhaps tweak the messaging, play around with timings or test out different tactics. If you’re still seeing no results drop it and focus your energy on what is working. Play to your strengths and when you have a strategy that works, optimise the heck out of it.
If something works, stick with it.
Make your team more efficient
It’s not just money that’s tight for a small business – time is another limited resource. Automating some of the everyday marketing tasks can free up a big chunk of time. For example, tools like Hootsuite let you access all your social platforms in one place, automate social posts at a click and compare the performance of your campaigns across various platforms.
When you’re not bogged down with these routine tasks, it gives you more time to focus on the big picture and improve your overall marketing strategy.
Target your audience effectively
When trying to get more out of a marketing budget, some marketers make the mistake of “optimising” campaigns to reach as many people as possible.
While it makes sense to assume that reaching more people gives you more potential visitors and customers, the reality is if your messages aren’t relevant, they aren’t going to resonate, and it won’t matter how many people you end up reaching. Get to know your target audiences and tailor your messages to them.
Get maximum mileage out of existing content
If you create new material every time you have a marketing need, you’ll end up in a constantly demanding cycle of creative effort. Instead, you can recycle content used for one medium, and reuse it in other. Sometimes simply giving it a new title, an introduction and refreshing some imagery can give it a new lease of life and help boost conversions.
If a past webinar generated a high volume of webinars, don’t let it go to waste! Why not turn the slide content into a mini eGuide? Or even just use the webinar recording in campaigns to give it more longevity. Did a previous presentation prove popular with the audience? Take some of the key stats and graphs and create an infographic.
How much time does your team spend on non-strategic admin tasks in a week?
How much of their time is spent searching for the correct versions of images, logos, text files and videos for your marketing communications.
Technology such as online digital asset management can help increase productivity and free up resources because all your brand assets are stored, managed and accessed in one place.
Tap into marketing resources available to you
Don’t try and reinvent the wheel, take advantage of the resources that are already available to you.
As a channel partner, you can benefit from support from the vendors you work with. Gamma channel partners have access to Accelerate, an online partner marketing portal.
Accelerate is home to a huge library of white label campaign material – from brochures, emails and social posts, to web banners, imagery and automated workflows. The platform includes a range of clever campaign features to help you generate new leads and engage with prospects and customers. It’s ideal for partners that have limited time, resource or budget to focus on marketing, and reduces costs for those that outsource this work.
Need help getting started with Accelerate?
Check out our handy ‘how to’ videos or contact [email protected] today.
