Ways to Decrease Your Marketing Budget
Times are tough on businesses, especially small businesses. Now is the time to cut back on non-essential costs to focus on growth. One of the first thing businesses cut when facing hard times is their marketing budget. This is a bit of a double-edged sword, because while cutting a business’s marketing budget will save money, it can also hurt overall business. Without a large marketing budget, the amount of new conversions a business sees may decrease, which often leads to sales decreasing. There are a few ways to decrease your budget without harming your sales. Check out these safe ways to decrease your marketing budget.
Bring things in-house
Most of the services a business hires out for can be done in-house to save money. For example, a business spends a lot of money on labels for its products. A one-time purchase of a label printer can save a ton of money on production costs, making the return on investment high. Other things that can easily be brought in-house are social media efforts, email communications, product production, and supply chain. Weigh the initial costs of each aspect you are considering bringing in-house and decide which will have the greatest return on investment for your company.
Focus on the methods that yield the best results
Many businesses rely on marketing from multiple facets. For example, a business may run pay-per-click ads, invest in a search engine optimization campaign, run paid advertisements, have a paid social account, and invest in email marketing. Look at the analytics of each of these to get a more in-depth view of which are yielding the best results. Keep in mind that this doesn’t always mean which is making the most impressions; conversions are what really matter. Try to eliminate any of these methods that aren’t performing the way you’d hoped or seem to have insubstantial results.
Run a social media campaign
Cancel that paid social account and put in the elbow grease yourself to stay present on social media. Social media is how people interact with each other and brands. Build out your following by simply interacting with customers, posting regularly (but not too regularly), and try to get local pages and accounts to interact with and share your content. There are many local boards and pages that aim to support small businesses, so utilize the free tools social media has set up to help your business.
