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How to get the most from your marketing budget

23rd Aug 2016
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As business owners will know, if you run a small enterprise with a limited resource, every penny counts. Therefore when it comes to marketing, you need to know what activities will make the largest impact at the lowest cost. Return on investment is paramount to the success of your projects and as one size does not fit all, businesses need to look at their target market to help identify what will work for them.

Review your marketing activity

You can’t ensure a good ROI from your marketing efforts unless you know exactly what impact your current activities are having. It’s useful to review your marketing so you can stop activities that are not delivering a return, improve on activities that appear to be gaining momentum and continue with those that are working well.

So how do you measure success?

Measure the value of activities by calculating the number of sales and leads generated by all of your organisation’s marketing endeavours. Take into account meetings booked from memberships of associations, attendance at networking groups as well as presence at exhibitions and events. Review the number of visits to your website from social media, PPC campaigns and newsletters as well as the number of meetings arranged from telemarketing campaigns. The results will give you an idea of how engaged you are with your target audience and contacts.

Use cost effective marketing tools

Making the most of free ways of promoting your business is essential to help extend your marketing budget. So once you have reviewed your marketing efforts and measured the success of those activities you will know what areas to concentrate on. These can vary and involve using the skills you have in-house such as sending out press releases to build your profile and will only involve your time and any travel expenses incurred.

Take the opportunity to speak at events and we well as becoming known as an expert in your field, you will create opportunity to promote your company. Attend as many networking events, conferences and exhibitions as possible to spread the word about your organisation and its services. Make sure you plan in advance to get the most out of the event. Know your goals and objectives, don’t forget to take your business cards and to follow up those leads as no follow up equals a waste of your time.

Let others do the talking and sing your praises by asking for a testimonial for your website from your existing customers. Also why not ask for referrals. Offer them some kind of incentive such as a discount or gift for recommending your business to new clients.

Review supplier agreements

Are you getting the best deal from your supplier? Going out to tender on a regular basis will ensure you get the best value for the services you receive, whether you are reviewing your web or graphic design provider. You could use an expense reduction analyst who will offer cost management and procurement services to ensure you get the prefect deal when it comes to print services. Significant savings could be made if your organisation has high print costs for example.

Enter business awards

A fantastic way to shout out loud about your organisation, business and industry awards offer free publicity as well as the chance to enhance your standing within your industry or local community. It also provides excellent content for press releases, website, newsletters and social media. If there is prize money at stake, this could extend your marketing budget creating a win, win situation!

With a bit of effort and planning any organisation can make the smallest marketing budget go even further than they think. Getting value for money is more about how you spend your budget rather than how much you have. By planning, reviewing and spending wisely will get you the desired result.

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