One of the most important aspects of running a thriving business is marketing your products or services. Without advertising your business, you will not be able to find new customers.
However, while marketing your business is paramount, you must be careful not to overspend your marketing budget. If you’re spending large sums of money on marketing projects that aren’t bringing you significant sales, you’re doing your business a disservice in the long run.
It can be difficult for many business owners to strike a balance between investing in marketing efforts and affording other necessary expenses such as rent, inventory, and wages.
In this article, you’ll learn how to cut your marketing budget without hurting your business.
- Start with a small reduction in your marketing budget
Cutting the budget can be a difficult task. But if you’re willing to cut your marketing costs, start with projects that don’t generate sales. It can be disappointing to admit that a brilliant idea didn’t live up to expectations, but it’s better to accept defeat and save money.
Whether it’s print ads, flyers that aren’t generating leads, you should get rid of those projects.
Use Google Analytics or any analytics program to determine which marketing campaigns are not paying dividends.
- Focus on quality, not quantity
You might think that juggling multiple marketing initiatives at the same time would be good for your business, but it can actually be bad (especially for your wallet).
You should allocate space in your budget for quality marketing efforts rather than trying to invest in a few average projects. For example, you may see that most of your customers are related to online advertising. In this case, you should be putting more money into this area instead of allocating money in your budget to ideas that don’t generate leads.
Invest in marketing efforts that you know will benefit your sales. Get rid of areas in your marketing budget that are not reliable.
- Do your research
You may not realize it, but you could be wasting money on outdated marketing methods like cold calling.
Before cutting your marketing budget, take some time to learn about marketing trends, for example, sign up for our newsletter, social media, blog regularly. But don’t stop there, because the more you read and follow the latest news, the more aware you become.
- Stop contacting uninterested people
While it’s important to keep an eye on customers who haven’t yet turned into repeat customers, you shouldn’t put too much effort into this group. It makes more sense to target potential customers who fit into the portrait of the ideal buyer, as they are much more likely to become customers.
If you contact the same people and they keep not responding, you are wasting time and money that could be used elsewhere.
- Organize your marketing data
When cutting your marketing budget, you should review your data and make sure everything is up to date. This may include updating contact information or an email or sms database. This ensures that you don’t contact people by mail who are no longer on this list, and you don’t send emails to invalid addresses.
Going forward, you should make data organization a top priority. By not focusing on the accuracy of your data, you may be spending more money than you think on useless marketing efforts.
- Use social networks
Planning engaging social media posts is a free and easy way to promote your business, especially when done strategically. You can share updates about your business on platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram without having to select targeted ads on those sites. Plus, you can use relevant hashtags to increase your reach – also for free.
It doesn’t have to be an all or nothing approach. Consider limiting your promoted posts to, for example, a small amount per day.
- Rely on free advertising
Cutting down on paid marketing projects can be a daunting task, but many business owners overlook the power of free advertising. You can contact local journalists, public relations companies and websites to talk about your business.
Maybe you’re running a charity event or introducing a new product. If you pitch this story to a news source, you’ll get coverage for your business without spending a dime. This approach is not too laborious and will give you the opportunity to get free business promotion.
Expert in legal marketing. Head of marketing agency MAVR.
Business degree “Master of Business Administration” (MBA).