Believe The Hype: Marketing Can Be Cost-Effective
The marketing budget in some businesses can be absolutely huge nowadays. To the point that it can be hard to believe that some can sustain such a behemoth of internet, TV, and live advertising.
The businesses that can afford it usually have the kind of revenue to support it. If you don’t, then you need to think smarter, not bigger. Here’s how you can get a great impact on your marketing with even a modest budget.
Know your marketing
If you’re going to spend on traditional and outbound digital marketing, then you had better make sure that it’s going to the right place. For instance, targeted marketing messages on Twitter and Facebook can have definitions applied to them that ensure your money is spent on getting your message in front of just the right people. Otherwise, it’s the inefficiency of your marketing that will make it cost so much.
Think inbound
You can limit your costs by resorting less and less to reaching out. Instead, think about how much easier it could be for the right people to find you. Inbound marketing is all about building a presence. For instance, with your site, it’s an SEO service that could help you get the visibility to appear in relevant searches. Meanwhile, creating the right content could answer the questions of your target market while putting them face-to-face with your brand for the first time. Visibility and value are two of the most important things about making a first impression. If that first impression can form naturally from a web visitor’s desire, as opposed to your desire to reach out and grab them, then it’s all the better.
Retention is easier than creation
Just as it takes less effort and less money to win customers through inbound marketing, it takes less to retain than it does to bring in brand new customers. Yet many will forsake their existing customer base to keep hunting for others, without fully tapping the potential of those they’ve won over. Keep existing customers interested by getting them signing up to email campaigns and offering exclusive added value to future purchases.
A little help from your friends
One of the problems with a lot of marketing today is that it’s just coming from one source. The company is the only one talking about its products. People naturally don’t have as much trust for marketing as they do from others sharing their opinions. So, get more people sharing those opinions. Network marketing with other business owners can get them to vouch for you and your services, for instance. Meanwhile, influencer marketing can help you reach ready-built audiences that are already listening to the tastemakers in the industry.
Establish your presence amongst your target market by learning the best ways to reach them, building visibility, communication, and community. More than a fleeting outreach, this gives you a solid, growing core that more people can notice naturally. This is how you build that strong customer base that can give you the financial support you need to grow your marketing budget in future.
Insanely Clever Marketing 