If you’re a small business, chances are, you’re operating on a tight budget.
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Spending any of it on marketing may seem out of the question when other bills are coming due. The good news is that there are several important strategies you can use to run successful online marketing campaigns without breaking the bank.
#1. Follow the Data
The first step in any campaign is to use measurable data to make decisions. Tracking metrics and conversion data on your online marketing campaigns is essential and will always save you money in the long run.
If it’s your first or 100th campaign, setting up metric and data tracking will save you thousands of dollars of marketing spend by identifying which strategies perform well with your target audience and which ones are money pits.
#2. Utilize Organic Channels
Paid advertising is great and your business will definitely see results with paid ads on social media or Google. For businesses on a budget, however, paid ads can eat up your marketing budget pretty quickly — limiting your ability to branch out in other directions.
That’s where organic marketing channels come in. These include:
- SEO
- Blogging
- Social Media
- Email Marketing
Each of these options is worth its weight in gold (so to speak) if done correctly. The only cost here is your time and they all have great returns that last a lot longer than paid ads.
Ranking for SEO should be a goal for any business and once you’re there it’s much easier to stay there. Search engine results are how we browse the internet to find information and if potential customers are looking for your service they’ll never find it unless you’re highly ranked.
One of the easiest ways to boost your rankings is to look internally at your site. Speeding up your site and optimizing the viewer experience with quick page loads will ultimately boost your SEO rankings and boost your overall user experience as well.
#3. Engage Your Audience
The idea sounds simple on paper, but after funneling viewers to your site you really need to maximize the traffic potential by keeping them engaged on-site for as long as possible. One of the best ways to use this traffic is to have focused and engaging landing pages.
Inbound links, whether they come from email marketing or backlinks, should lead to high-quality, engaging landing pages. Ensure that the first thing that viewers see is relevant to the link they clicked and the information they’re searching for adds up to an inexpensive way to boost numbers and conversions.
Another way to keep costs down during landing page creation is to use free stock video and images to immediately convey the product or feeling you’re trying to sell to the consumer.
#4. Recycle Past Content
Reduce, reuse, recycle…right? If some of your past content made a splash on one channel, why not try recycling it on a new channel? This doesn’t mean reposting on social media until the cows come home, this means repurposing some useful content for a different audience.
For example, if a tutorial video you created went viral in the past, repurpose it as a successful webinar. In this case, you can also collect email addresses from all attendees, boosting your email marketing reach as well.
Recycling past content really comes down to reviewing previous marketing campaigns, analyzing the data, and seeing what really hit home with your customers. If a piece of content was successful with your target audience on one channel, chances are, it will do the same in a repurposed form in front of a new set of eyes.
#5. Leverage Relationships
Real-life human interaction may seem like a thing of the past but is actually a key to successful marketing. There are several ways you can use human relationships to boost your marketing spend.
Reaching out to previous clients for testimonials or using contacts from other industries to provide backlinks and product endorsements is an essential part of business relations. As SEO and backlinks become more important, having those connections make building up your site’s authority easier by having a network of colleagues to help improve your campaigns.