Reduce Marketing Costs For 2019 With these 5 Tips
April 19, 2019
Digital marketing is a multi-billion-dollar industry. Of course, if shouldn’t cost your company a billion dollars to advertise, but it can be pricey all the same. While there are some paid marketing methods which take time and money, such as pay per click advertising, others are free or cheap to use.
Finding the best avenue for a campaign takes strategizing, market research and an audit of current methods and outcomes. Reading metrics reports help verify current campaign success or failure before launching something new.
Whether you’re entering the digital marketing arena for the first time or this is old hat, here are 5 tips for economic marketing in 2019.
1. Post Content On All Platforms: Limiting yourself to just one platform is a big mistake in the marketing world. In fact, it not only limits you, but your audience as well. Not all users for Facebook are also on Instagram. Similarly, some social spaces, like LinkedIn cater to an entirely different marketplace than others. LinkedIn is a direct path to business users, while Snapchat is a younger more frivolous audience. Both spaces have pros and cons, which is why it’s essential to frequent both if relevant to your brand.
Social media is a generally free marketing tool. It only makes sense to use as many as you can to get your message across. The key is to post only the most high-quality and engaging content to each platform – tweaking it slightly so it doesn’t appear copied and pasted. Turning long website blogs into short Facebook posts, Twitter infographics, Instagram memes, and so forth makes each post unique and interesting.
2. Market In-House: Hiring an external marketing firm guarantees ROI, but it also guarantees higher costs. Marketing in-house allows you to use the strengths of employees already on salary to benefit new campaigns. A team to research, write, and publish costs no more than what you’re already paying, unless extra hours of required of course. This only leaves costs for paid advertising strategies, which can still pay off if the proper respect has been paid to research and planning.
Another option is hiring a small local firm or a single outside marketer to assist on an advisory basis. Getting advice from a marketer is often much cheaper than hiring a team of marketers to do your bidding. You’ll wind up doing more grunt work yourself but save money in the end.
3. Streamline PPC Keywords: Pay per click marketing works on the basis that you only pay when an ad is clicked. This is great if your keywords are relevant enough that consumers are finding your page and thinking, “oh great, this is exactly what I thought I’d find here.” Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case, and some low-end keywords which come at a decent bid price don’t pay off in turns of conversion.
Monitor keywords through metrics reporting to see which words are paying off and which aren’t working out. Keywords which are sucking up financial resources with minimal ROI can be removed in favor of better performing words. Be prepared to pay more for search phrases with results. They cost more because they convert more.
4. Use Stock Images: Many marketers pay big bucks for beautiful aesthetics, including a design team, professional photographer, and more. By using stock photos and free editing software you can create your own eye-catching graphics without paying an arm and a leg. Be sure to give credit where credit is due, but otherwise this is an excellent way to reduce costs to your visual campaigns.
You can also save money by creating custom content on your own through streaming video and infographics. Both these marketing tools are hot right now and cost near to nothing to invest in. Investing less means a bigger ROI overall.
5. Focus on Personal Stories and Content: Social marketing is huge in the digital scene right now, and it costs nothing to produce if done correctly. The thought behind this strategy is to engage and build a relationship with the customer through personal stories and experiences. Interacting in a live video message, creating a customer chat room or forum, and writing content specifically for your current social media followers and blog readers is what’s needed here.
Drawing from your personal life takes time but saves money, and it creates a great human quality for your brand. This style of marketing not only cuts costs but builds brand loyalty. It also looks great to search engines like Google who base part of their ranking system on customer involvement and fresh content consistency.
Whether you choose to use these tips or follow your own guide to low-cost digital marketing success, this is a great time to get involved. The digital marketing world has grown in leaps and bounds over the past decade. The ecommerce industry began only 24-years ago with eBay and Amazon in 1995. Since then it’s gone from a million users to several billion users. This shift in the digital landscape created a wide assortment of opportunities for small and big businesses alike.
Whether you’ve got money to spend or you’re saving pennies every chance you get, there’s a niche for you to market it here. The important thing to remember is to stand out from competitors, and you can do this by following the above tips and engaging with your customers as often as possible. Brand awareness is the foundation of any successful marketing campaign.