When you run a business, spending money is a must, even if it can be hard to do sometimes. The key is to look at anything you have to spend as an investment, and make sure you work out precisely how much you’re going to make as a return on that investment once you’ve put the money into something. That’s how you need to look at your marketing as well, especially as marketing is absolutely non-negotiable when you want your business to grow.
Without good marketing, you’re not going to find the growth you need to make any profits, and without profits, you might have to shut up shop (perhaps literally) before you can get very far. The best thing to do is to get your marketing in place from the very start so that you can be sure you’re on the right track, and don’t be afraid to make changes if you need to. You’ll also need to know how to make the most of your marketing budget – here are some ways to do just that.
Use Complementary Strategies
Using one marketing method at a time will cost you a lot more than if you can combine them and make the most of the funds you have available to you. That’s why it’s so important to look at your overall marketing strategy – and to have one in the first place – so you know exactly what it is you want to achieve. Then, you can work out how to reach your marketing goals and how to allocate your marketing budget in the right way. If you’re not sure how to create an overall marketing campaign, it’s worth knowing that LinkedIn marketing experts show how to boost engagement, and that’s a great way to get started – asking experts for help and guidance is never a bad option.
Here’s a good example; instead of taking two different marketing goals and working out two different ways to reach them, you can instead come up with an idea that links the two things together. That means only having to work on one idea and pay for one idea – perfect for making the most of your marketing budget – but getting twice the results. So if you blog on a regular basis, you can combine that with good SEO or your social media campaigns, and you’ll be doing fantastic things for your marketing.
Stop What Isn’t Working
In business, if something isn’t doing what it’s meant to be doing, there’s no point in continuing to do it. In fact, it would just be a waste of time and money, and at worst, it could be hurting your company’s reputation. It won’t be bringing in more customers and ensuring you get a lot more sales, boosting your business to success. In other words, stop what isn’t working, including marketing campaigns that aren’t converting.
In order to be able to do this – and do it as quickly as possible – you’ll need to know which of your ideas is working and which isn’t, so you’ll have to measure your results. That way, you’ll know what to stop and keep working on (or even put more money into). Always make sure you have a system in place to test and measure every marketing campaign you have in place because as soon as you notice there’s an issue and it’s not bringing in the money it’s meant to, you can make changes or halt the entire thing if need be.
Outsource Your Marketing
It might sound strange to say that to make the most of your marketing budget and stretch it as far as possible you should spend some (or perhaps most) of it on outsourcing – in other words, finding third parties to do the work for you. Surely it would make more sense to do it all in-house and save that money?
In some cases, that is true; if you have the same marketing skills as those you would be outsourcing to and have the time to dedicate to a marketing campaign, then keeping things in-house would be better and would save money. However, if you don’t have the time or the skills, that idea can be a false economy – the campaign might be rushed or just not do the job it’s meant to do if you don’t know how to create a good one, how to do market research, and how to speak directly to your target audience, for example.
Outsourcing will cost you more money initially, but it will also generally get you better results, and that means a better return on that investment, so you’ll recoup the costs and, hopefully, make a profit.
Shop Around
If your plan is to outsource your marketing (which, as we’ve seen, is an excellent idea), then it’s a good idea to shop around before you commit to using any particular business or expert. Outsourcing your marketing is not something to do on a whim – you must have a set budget in place, and you’ll need to have at least a few ideas about what you want them to do, but the most important thing is to find people to work with who are professional, who have plenty of experience, and who you can talk to and communicate with – you have to be able to share ideas, and you need to be able to offer feedback; otherwise you might end up with something that just doesn’t work and then be stuck with it.
Take some time to shop around and interview at least three different marketing experts. Ask them all the same questions about what they’ll do and how they’ll do it, and then choose the one you and your business match with best. It takes more time, but it also gets you the best results and makes your marketing budget go a lot further, which is the aim of being in business and is what will help you grow.