Marketing isn’t like a tap that you can switch on and off whenever you please. It should be ever-flowing to generate interest in your business and boost revenue. But with so many marketing methods available, it doesn’t take long for costs to rise and budgets to shrink. Yet, it’s possible to reduce marketing costs while still having an effect. Think of it as your marketing efforts working smarter, not harder. . .
In this guide, we’re detailing how you can cut down on marketing costs while creating engaging content that reasons with your audience and attracts new customers. Read on and find out how to reduce marketing costs by educating, using data and much more.
Educate instead of advertising
It’s easy to fall into the trap of using marketing to sell your brand by talking about the quality of your products and services and how great everything is. And while there’s no doubt about your level of excellence, try showing rather than telling.
Focus on content marketing and give your shoppers value. From creating blog posts looking at the latest trends in your industry to offering regular newsletters and having an active presence on social media, these marketing methods offer a way to demonstrate the worth of your online store. And they’re relatively cost-efficient methods, costing 62% less than outbound marketing.
Repurpose older content
If you have a library of good-quality content, see if you can repurpose it. Update an old blog post or turn them into a podcast. You can see a significant boost in organic traffic by updating and repurposing old content, as it already has a ranking on Google.
Think about adding short videos summarising the article or take an ebook you wrote and break it down into smaller posts. Use snippets on social media to try and derive as much as possible from older content. It could be that you’re sitting on a gold mine of content that’s ready to be refreshed.
Create customer personas
It’s likely more than one type of person uses your products or services. Therefore, you really need to create an effective marketing strategy that goes deeper into the different personality traits found in your shoppers.
Doing so will help you identify the type of people you should be interacting with while also giving you more clarity over the type of demographics who buy your products and services. If you know what your customers look like, you can refine your marketing and craft messaging architecture that resonates with them and increase the chance of making more sales.
Become data-focused
Data is now an integral component of marketing plans and can provide genuine insight into how your efforts perform. You should analyse data and metrics regularly so that you can adapt and change parts of your marketing outreach as required.
Whether you’re using data on social media platforms or looking at the current customer personas from your existing database of clients, data removes the guesswork and allows you to focus on marketing methods that will strike the right chord with your audience.
Think about chatbots
If you’re not using chatbots already, now is the time to explore implementing them. A chatbot is a great way to cut through the noise and get to the crux of what a shopper wants. They can be programmed to ask specific questions and get valuable information from potential customers that allow you to help them quicker.
By the end of 2022, chatbots are set to save businesses an impressive £7bn. And with 50% of companies planning to spend more on chatbots than mobile marketing, the use of them only looks to become more important in the coming years.
Be selective with new strategies
Having an open mind and willingness to try new marketing methods is essential for moving your business forward. But it doesn’t mean you should try every emerging trend, as this can be cost-ineffective and time-consuming, yet fail to yield the desired results.
Instead, focus on the efforts that are having a positive impact and double down on them. If they’re already bringing in revenue, then it’s worth exploring how you can extract more out of them and keep your company moving forward. That doesn’t mean you should never try marketing tactics again. Just be more selective with your efforts.
Automate (but don’t forget the power of people)
More businesses are using marketing automation to handle the day-to-day efforts of their outreach. Marketing automation can help speed up processes, which ensures many elements run smoother and are more cost-effective.
The key to automation is finding the right balance, as you don’t want to reduce the human effect. But with certain processes automated, such as daily marketing tasks, you can put your skills to good use in areas where they excel. This is especially helpful if you run a smaller business where everyone is all hands-on.
Winning with cost-effective marketing
Every business needs to market its services, and it's no different with online stores – especially if you’re in a competitive market. The methods on our list not only cut down on marketing costs; they also provide you with the opportunity to set yourself apart from the crowd and become a company with a five-star marketing plan.
