How To Make The Most of Your Marketing Budget

We are now well into the New Year and many businesses may have taken some time out this month to revisit marketing resources and think about new strategies for the upcoming year.

For lots of small-medium sized businesses however, marketing budgets are limited and therefore it’s essential that every penny counts.

In order to grow a brand successfully, businesses need to develop a solid marketing plan, which works as efficiently as possible.

To give you a hand, we’ve put together our top 3 tips to help ensure that your marketing budget goes further and works hard for your business all year long.

Set a plan and stick to it…

It’s fairly common knowledge that your customers need to see your brand or advertisement 7 times or more before they take action. There’s really no point in sending out a mail-shot one month and expecting a good response. Plan your marketing activity for the whole year and stick to your plan. The activity might not deliver immediate sales but will build familiarity with your brand. Always make sure you’re at least 1 month ahead with developing your marketing content and that you’re constantly building good lists of target clients for mail-shots, social media and email marketing.

Market to existing customers

There are lots of methods to drive new traffic to your website, but one that’s often over-looked is marketing to your existing client base.

The hard work has already been done to get the initial visit to the website, persuade the customer to purchase and successfully fulfil the order so why not try a targeting email campaign to the customer? You know what product they have purchased so try your hand at re-marketing similar products or offers to that same customer.

Regular, professionally designed email campaigns are a must for all online businesses and a really cost effective method to have in your online toolkit. Using the latest tracking techniques and trigger campaigns mean the days of sending a blanket email and hoping for the best are over.

Have a clear marketing strategy and revisit it regularly

Before you start any marketing campaign you need to make sure you have a clear strategy defined.

What is it you want to achieve from this campaign? It might be lead generation or increased traffic and brand awareness. Really define your target audience: using market research and detailed search analysis your online content and ads should be compelling and relevant to that specific demographic.

Once this strategy has been defined and objectives set, make sure you revisit it regularly. It’s easy to lose sight resulting in wasted time and money.

At Platform81 we’re passionate about supporting businesses with big ideas and can advise you on the best ways to target your customers online and offline and gain genuine enquiries.

If you need help making the most of your marketing budget, why not give us a call and let us know!