Many businesses today spend way too much money marketing their brand and products without getting a good enough return of investment. Businesses should rethink wisely on where to allocate their time, money, effort and resources within their marketing team to ensure that they do not overspend their budget and also to ensure that they are able to attain the results they desire.
For owners of small local businesses or entrepreneurs with newly established start-up businesses, it is difficult to compete with large corporations because they have a big marketing budget that will obliterate your competition. However, there are many affordable marketing techniques that enables us to minimize on the cost and still be able to rake in a steady profit.
Here are the many ways you could save money on marketing:
1. Make a marketing plan
In order to make the most out of your limited budget, it is a good idea to make a marketing plan ahead of time. Businesses should set a goal that they would like to achieve with their marketing tactics. To achieve that goal, business owners can track the progress and reach of their marketing tactics, so that they know what types of tactics work to get the results they desire. Most social media platforms allow the users to track the data and statistics regarding the traffic of their page for free, utilize that resource. Businesses should also draft out how much money they are planning to allocate for different platforms of marketing; a portion of the budget could go to influencer marketing, another portion of it could be invested in Google search ads etc.
2. Do it Yourself
Small business owners who are on a budget could start out marketing for their businesses on their own. Firstly, you could schedule and do your own social media postings on various platforms to increase the outreach and awareness of your brand. Besides that, you could also bring more traffic to your digital platforms by doing some content marketing on your own. By writing blogs and articles, people will be able to find your company online when searching for keywords that match your blogs. This may take a lot more time and effort, but time is always a more efficient method of investment than money.
3. Experiment with Micro-influencer marketing
Utilizing micro-influencers or local small-scale celebrities to market your product is a really good way to bring awareness to your brand. Influencers could range from YouTubers, bloggers, Instagram models etc., ensure that you pick the right influencers for your brand and product. A food blogger will likely help a restaurant gain popularity, whereas, a makeup influencer can help a beauty brand gain some following. Hiring small-scale influencers isn’t expensive at all, they will be happy to post about your product if you provide free services and trials.
4. Reuse materials
If a business has already spent money on marketing, it is wise to reuse and recycle the materials in future adverts or events. Making new marketing materials for all campaigns and events can be quite costly, try to pick marketing methods that could be used time and time again. Banners, buntings, brochures, posters can all be used from an event to the next event as they are portable and can be stowed away. Other materials such as graphic designs, campaign posts and videos could also be recycled for a future campaign or event.
5. Experiment with offline marketing
Businesses focus a lot of their time and money on perfecting their social media platforms or to improve their company sites. Traditional offline marketing proves to be a cheaper alternative for small businesses and start-ups. Experiment with the use of banner and buntings, leaflets, brochures, mail/newspaper insertion techniques. These old school methods will give up-to date results as it has the power to influence the local community and there will always be an audience for them. Furthermore, printing and distribution of these offline marketing materials do not cost much, hence, it helps the business to save extra money.
6. Maximize the use of free tools and platforms
Have customers market for your brand and product as third-party recommendations always have more credibility and reliability than any marketing you do. Encourage customers to write Google reviews or perhaps have referral discounts when they introduce their friends. Besides that, business owners could also write guest blogs on other digital platforms to promote their brand and business for free. When creating marketing material, try using free alternatives to minimize the cost of marketing. Instead of paid services such as Photoshop for graphic design, experiment with free sites like Venngage or Canva. Instead of paying for image licensing, try finding free images on Negative Space or Unsplash.
7. Target the right demographic
Do not waste money and time on people who are uninterested in your brand and business as it will lead you nowhere. Find your intended target audience and focus all of your marketing resources on these people. If you are a small local restaurant, try to advertise your restaurant within your local community. Do not waste money advertising anywhere and everywhere, be smart about allocating your marketing resources, target people in specific neighbourhoods and people within that area of interest.
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