Effective Marketing on a Budget
Marketing can be both expensive and time-consuming, and it also can fail to show a return on an investment. The cost and success of marketing often can lead to the success or failure of a business.
Lowering your marketing costs is not just about making more of an initial impact. It is most effective when a customer comes back again and brings his or her friends.
Here are some things to consider when marketing:
- Ability to track: Think of how you can track your campaign before you begin. If you don’t know the ROI on your marketing efforts, you won’t know if you should keep doing them or move on to something else.
- Don’t be afraid of change: Be open to trying new methods and content. Even if you have something working, it doesn’t mean something else won’t work better. I also would suggest not investing a lot of money in something that has not been proven successful for you. Try a test campaign first. Hopefully, it will give you an idea if you should invest more.
- Don’t always be worried about the other guy: Just because someone else is using social media, or sending out mailers, etc., it doesn’t mean that is the best way to spend your time and money. Keep alert and open to new ways to market, but don’t necessarily do something just because someone else is doing it.
- Market smarter: Think of ways to be able to market that same person again, but this time at no cost to you. What if instead of that QR code giving them a discount, perhaps have it take them to your site to capture their information before giving them that discount. Opt-in email lists can be enormously effective. You can market to that same person a million times over for practically nothing.
- Repeat business is the secret sauce: The easiest way to lower your marketing expense is with repeat business and referrals. This should be your primary goal with every customer interaction. You and your employees should have a consistent way of providing your service and a consistent quality product. Even if the first four times a customer has a positive experience and the fifth time was less than positive, there could be a good chance they won’t be back and an even better chance they won’t refer people to you.
ROI is everything in marketing, and it is imperative for maximum success that you know what is going on and are trying to lower your marketing expense. Don’t forget that time is an expense and a major one. Certain marketing may “seem” free, but when you factor in time that could be better spent improving your quality of product and service, it could prove expensive.
