How to Reduce Marketing Expense While Increasing Results

Many so-called traditional marketing tactics like advertising, trade shows and print literature are huge cost-drivers in the marketing budget. Good news is that many of these often cost-prohibitive tactics can be reduced and replaced with more cost-efficient marketing.

This blog will share 5 tips for stretching your marketing investment, while increasing marketing effectiveness and results! In addition, several resources are provided to assist in your quest for marketing nirvana—doing more with less!

5 Tips for Reducing Marketing Expense While Increasing Effectiveness

1) Customer insight: marketing is expensive, mistakes costly. Avoid mistakes with insight into customer segments, needs, decision makers, and more. House all your customer intelligence in a robust database or marketing automation software that can be updated easily and used for downstream marketing. Continually survey, research and gather customer information to guide marketing decisions.

2) Shift advertising to Internet: advertising is often the largest line item in a marketing budget. Reallocate a portion of this budget to an improved website with search engine optimization (SEO), blogging and social media. Most purchase decisions begin or end with a search engine. Unless your website is ranked the top few search result positions, all the advertising in the world won’t help. And yes, you need a mobile-friendly website.

3) Replace print with electronic: no print is not dead, but it is a cost hog and can be scaled back. Actively provide PDF versions of catalogs and brochures and reduce print runs. Replace expensive direct mail (print AND ever-rising postage costs) with relatively inexpensive email campaigns.

4) Leverage publicity: PR or publicity placements are free by definition, with awareness building that rivals advertising! Make PR integral to your marketing. PR includes article writing and placement, media relations, public speaking and related. Distribute news to email editor lists, free (internet) PR directories, and even paid PR wire services like PRweb and Business Wire.

5) Repurpose content: Content is king, but it doesn’t have to cost a kings ransom! Use the same content in different formats. Develop once, use ten times! How? Blog an abstract of a whitepaper with a registration page for download, announce the whitepaper with a PR release, social post, create a corresponding video, introduce to customers and prospects via email, create a website landing page, develop a survey about the topic, create an infographic, host a webcast. Get the picture?

Now all that belt tightening wasn’t so hard, was it? Want more? Check out some of these great resources for pinching marketing pennies.