In order to run a successful marketing campaign, you need to invest some money, however, the amount of money that you have on your hands doesn’t necessarily determine your success. Picking the methods that bring the best ROI can help you get the most of your value but money is not always the issue.
You must have heard the expression that time is money. This simply means that an hour of your work (or that of your staff) has a certain value. By cutting down the time needed to complete a certain task, you’re also reducing your overhead. All in all, here are eight powerful ways to market your business on a limited budget.
Set your marketing budget
Before we even start, you need to learn how to set a proper marketing budget. First of all, the majority of companies start by making an estimate of their average annual revenue. Then, the rule of thumb is that you should dedicate 10% of this amount to your marketing. From here, you need to make a list of strategies and methods that you plan to use for marketing. Then, you should prioritize and distribute these resources accordingly. If the niche is competitive, you can even go for 20% to 50% of the average annual revenue for your marketing.
Understand your challenges
Right off the bat, you need to understand that the single biggest challenge that the majority of content creators are encountering is the fact that it takes too much time to produce quality content. The 2019 average for producing a post was at about 3 hours and 57 minutes but the crème of the blogosphere usually spent more than 6 hours per post.
Recycle your old content
So, how do you reduce this time? One of the ways is to recycle your old content. Make a comparison piece. Update the data to include this year’s statistics and then republish it as relevant once again. One of the things you can do is try to change the format of your previous content. For instance, an interview can easily be repeated as a podcast. A stats page can become an infographic. The possibilities are virtually endless and you need to focus on finding the methods that fit your model the best.
Humanize your business
One of the most important things in marketing is trying to bring your business closer to your staff. According to one study, using photos of real people results in a 35% higher conversion rate than just downloading stock images. So, you need to photograph your staff in order to show your audience exactly who’s behind the logo. Keep in mind, nonetheless, that getting adequate photographs is an art, so, try finding specialists for corporate headshots and ask for advice.
Turn towards the UGC
Another thing you need to focus on is the user-generated content (the UGC). What’s so great about it is the fact that people usually take the words of those that they see as more similar to them at a greater value. Testimonials, user reviews and other forms of organic user/customer promotion are incredibly effective. Therefore, you might want to consider focusing on acquiring as many of these as possible.
Get involved in your online community
Your target audience is all online, visiting certain forums, liking other brands, following celebrities, and interacting with each other on various subreddits. Why not follow them there? Share some of the content that you know they would like, comment on something that they post, and, generally, try to make it appear as if you’re out there, just like them. This is also a great way to humanize your business, instead of having it portrayed as another faceless entity. Turning towards social media marketing a bit more is also a good idea.
Study your competition
Trial and error is probably the most efficient didactic method but every mistake is expensive and when you’re working on a budget, you may not have the luxury of making too many mistakes. So, why not study your competition instead? Check which of their pieces encounter the best results and make sure that you know how to emulate this success. Also, try to notice if there’s something that they’re doing wrong. This could be the competitive edge that you need.
Do not just focus on the ROI
Getting the best ROI is great but it’s not always budget-friendly. While some methods may give you a great return, if the initial investment is too great, they just might not be worth it. You need to diversify your marketing. If a certain marketing method costs you 90% of your entire marketing budget, it might be best to take a different approach.
In conclusion
The options are numerous and the list keeps on expanding. Keep in mind that while resources are important, resources are far more relevant to the success of your marketing campaign. It’s not how much money you have, it’s how you distribute it to diversify and maximize the effect of your marketing campaign.
