What would you rather do, spend thousands of your business’s precious capital in order to publish flashy print and TV ads, with no dependable way of measuring how much they’ve done for you, or pay a fraction of that to integrate effective online solutions into your existing marketing strategy?
Marketing ROI Tips and Tricks
It’s a no-brainer, right? The recent advance of digital marketing has opened up all kinds of avenues for savvy business owners to launch killer marketing campaigns for a relatively small cost. Here, we’ll look at some of the best ways you can make your marketing cheaper today.
Develop Your Social Networks
Even if they do nothing but annoy you, I’m sure you know at least something about the major social networks that are currently being used. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and more are free to sign up for. If you use them the right way, they’ll allow you to save hundreds, if not thousands of dollars that you’d usually have to spend on marketing campaigns.
Alerting your followers about new promotions and products, offering customer support and instantaneous feedback, networking with major brand influencers, and gaining great media coverage are just a few of the things that you can use social media for. Aside from that, they offer an easy channel for your target market to share your updates with their own friends and followers, spreading the reach of your marketing campaign without you ever having to lift a finger.
Furthermore, leveraging the social networks that are owned by Google (namely Google+ and YouTube), you’ll be able to create and publish keyword-optimized content more easily.
Think SEO
On the subject of Google, there are a range of easy and free ways for entrepreneurs to help their chances of getting in the top few links of search engine results. This, in turn, helps your chances of acquiring new customers who are interested in your product or service. Some of these tactics cost absolutely nothing.
Determining the keywords which your main customer base is searching for, and composing content on your blog or social media channels that includes these, only takes a small investment of time. If you’re using WordPress for your content management, like so many business owners are, there are many free plugins like Yoast which will hold your hand through optimizing your headlines, meta descriptions, and even your photo tags.
Reaching out to popular news outlets to generate backlinks is also an effective and free tactic you should consider using. Understandably, you may be a little strapped for time with all the other aspects of your business that need managing.
If you’re not prepared to hire a full-time, in-house SEO team, you can still mitigate the cost of it by looking for more spaced-out, monthly SEO services. With all this emphasis on SEO, make sure you’re not neglecting your coding and web design as you go. A massive part of digital marketing is making sure that the channels you use to present your product or service are totally functional and that all the bugs are ironed out.
Incentivize Referrals
Obviously, acquiring new customers for your business should be a major priority. However, if you divert too much of your time and money towards this, it can really come back to bite you. Instead of reaching out to people who have never heard of your brand, put more focus on keeping the customers you already have, and incentivizing them to grow your network for you.
This has the potential to save you masses of time and capital. Don’t think that you have to financially cripple yourself in order to make this tactic work. Referring someone to a business you’ve used means more than a freebie, discount, or some other practical perk. Taking part in a referrals program also has a significant psychological benefit for the customer, and serves to make them feel much more invested in your brand.
Aside from that, the customers they recruit will flock to you much more easily than the ones who you’re directing your content at. Recommendations from someone you know – even if you know they’re getting some material reward out of it – are invariably more trustworthy than anything with the brand stamped on it. Start throwing around some ideas for referral deals now.
Make these three tips a part of your usual marketing strategy, and pretty soon you’ll start to notice some incredible savings. Making digital marketing truly cost-effective is something of a balancing act, and varies from business to business. However, these tips are certain to get you on the right track! 🙂
