As the pandemic brought much of the world to a halt for the last year, many businesses tried to find places to cut corners financially to continue to operate. For some, marketing expenses were too steep and needed to be slashed. These are some of the methods that have been used by businesses to reduce their costs that you can use, too.
Improving customer targeting
In some industries, marketers have been able to get away with using brought marketing techniques that are used to appeal to broad audiences in order to reach their target demographic. Whether this is placing an ad on a streaming service that’s not directed toward any segment of a demographic or generalized TV ad spots, there are times when there wasn’t a tremendous amount of effort put into customer targeting.
To help with marketing budgets, companies have been forced to improve their customer targeting. This means appealing to specific demographics with targeted advertisements. This is beneficial because it means that budgets aren’t overspent on TV or radio ads when an Instagram post is more effective.
Repurposing existing content
Many companies overspend on writers creating fresh and new content. Those businesses that are new and still trying to establish their place in the industry will need to take this step in order to create a library of content. However, those who have been established with old content that can be drawn from are able to repurpose old content based on its original efficacy. For instance, an electronics store that put out a list of the latest and greatest features on this year’s top smartphone model can do that again just one year later. Not all ideas need to be unique.
Reusing content for different media
Similar to repurposing content, most content can be reused in a different medium or media. A blog post that did well to drive content to your website could be condensed into one social media post with an infographic or even a series of posts. You can put together a video with a more in-depth description and post that to YouTube, which can then be embedded into your blog or somewhere else on your website. Content doesn’t have to be unique to a single medium, you confined ways to reuse a topic and spread it across multiple.
Growing on social media
You don’t have to be an influencer with millions of followers to have an effective social media presence. Does it help? Of course, it does. Having more followers means that you’re going to get more eyes on your company. However, you don’t need to have millions of eyes to work on social media. Targeted posts that appeal to your audience will lead to interaction, which helps to improve your reputation. As your reputation grows, so will your following and pool of potential customers.
Utilizing search engine optimization (SEO)
Too often, SEO is a mystery to people outside of a marketing department. SEO efforts can be cut or put on the backburner compared to costly internet marketing techniques like pay per click because of a lack of understanding. The problem with this is that it is free to implement SEO strategies. Beyond the costs of maintaining a website and paying employees to do SEO, there are no additional costs. Google and Bing allow for free website verification within their directories and website optimization something that can be done in-house.
SEO takes nothing more than some know-how and time dedicated to doing it right. As most common SEO tactics are for local search results, enterprises can also focus on national and international SEO.
According to EWR Digital, an agency that offers enterprise SEO services in Texas, “Enterprise SEO incorporates the common strategies of basic SEO. However, it goes a step further. At a broad level, enterprise SEO does this by tying together the goals of marketing, web development, user experience, and branding departments.” This can all be done in-house or with the help of an agency.
Getting rid of subscription services
There are plenty of marketing subscription services out there that will try to take your money each month by doing something that you don’t need them to do. Most of these subscriptions are for social media automation platforms that either provide a free version of what you’re using or have a competitor who does. You can cut your budget by thousands of dollars each month by eliminating subscription services that you don’t need.
If you’re unsure which services you don’t need, do an audit. Take note of the services that you use each month. If you don’t use it for at least two of the four weeks in a month, you can probably stand to part with it. At the very least, you can note the features of the service that you use. Most premium services are above and beyond what is typical for many businesses, so you could find that you’re paying for a platform where the free version is sufficient.