7 Tips to make the most of your digital marketing budget
Posted: Tue Dec 10, 2024 10:50 am
What would you do if you had an unlimited budget for your company's marketing?
Where would you start? Would you run online advertising campaigns? Would you revamp your website? Would you pay for a CRM? Maybe all of the above…
Unfortunately, this is not a real scenario. The truth is that every person who works in marketing knows that their main job is to bring in as many customers for the company (more money) with the smallest possible budget.
So, here are seven tips to help you accomplish your mission.
How to make the most of your marketing budget?
1. Choose your priorities
With limited resources, it is necessary to focus on those activities that contribute most to achieving the goals of our marketing strategy .
Your marketing strategy is what should set the tone here. It tells you what you want to achieve with all your marketing efforts.
Once you have a clear idea of what you want, you can establish which tactics will contribute the most to achieving it. Study what has worked for you in the past and what hasn’t. What has worked for your competitors, what they haven’t done and why they haven’t done it. And most importantly, what your buyer personas are telling you . You can’t set priorities based on beliefs or what “seems logical.”
Look for statistics about your users or customers. Talk to them and find out the best way to reach them.
inbound priorities 2017
2. Write a blog
Having your own blog doesn't require a lot of money. It does require time, yes, but in the long run all your efforts will pay off. A blog helps your company's marketing in many ways , let's look at a few:
[mkdf_unordered_list style=»circle» animate=»no» font_weight=»normal»]
It helps your website's SEO as it allows you to position specific keywords for your niche (long tail keywords).
It allows you to establish yourself as an authority on a topic and create a knowledge base that will always be available to anyone with that need.
Open a communication channel with your audience. Therefore, when you start your blog, make sure you have a content plan to talk about the problems and needs of your buyer persona and not just about yourself.
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Additionally, and this is very important, it allows you to obtain data from those who come to your blog and convert those strangers into visitors.
3. Choose your best social channels
Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat… I’m sure I’m leaving out some other social channels. As tempting as it may seem to be on all of them (and those that are about to appear at any moment) it’s not the most efficient way to do it.
I know, I’ve been there and thought: what if I stop posting on _____ (insert social media name of your choice) today and a potential client just happened to be passing by? It’s a trick our minds play on us, because the truth is, it doesn’t work that way.
Working on multiple social networks at once is usually a waste of time, especially for small businesses. This is a (very) limited resource, and we are spending it on tasks that will have little impact on achieving our strategy.
So, take a step back and analyze on the one hand the resources you have: budget, time, skills (editing images, videos, etc.), and on the other hand, the information you have about your buyer persona : where they spend most of their time, how you can best communicate with them.
As a general rule, if you are a B2C business your focus should be on Facebook and Instagram. Whereas if you are a B2B business, you should focus on LinkedIn and perhaps Facebook or Twitter.
4. Pay for online advertising
If you're on a tight budget (and even if you're not), you have to invest in what's really worth it.
In the State of Inbound in Latin America report recently published by Hubspot, only 13% of marketing professionals surveyed referred to digital advertising as an overrated technique.
And if you think that online advertising cannot be applied within the framework of an inbound marketing strategy, we have news for you . For some time now, online advertising and inbound marketing have been reconciled; because in today's reality, online advertising is just a way to attract the attention of our audience to offer them great content that provides them with a solution.
It is important to note that when we talk about online advertising we are mainly referring to PPC advertising on Google, which appears in response to a specific query, and highly segmented advertising on social networks.
In the specific case of social media, the State of Inbound cited above points out that 17% of respondents view organic reach as an ineffective technique. We've already seen this on our Facebook pages: fewer and fewer people are being reached organically. If you thought this was something that was happening only to you, there are numerous reports that prove the opposite : to be successful on Facebook, the best tactic is to pay.
If you followed the advice above, you will have limited your social networks to one or two, making it easier for you to know how much to invest, where and how.
5. Build an email database
We already said it when we talked about the importance of having a blog for a strategy that makes the most of the budget: it is important to obtain data from those who visit your website.
And not just any data, but data that allows us to get closer to our potential customers and move them forward in our sales funnel.
One of the most important pieces of information in this regard (if not the most important) is the email address. Having the email address of those who visit your website will allow you to get in direct contact with them .
Think about it, sending an email means going straight to your buyer persona 's inbox . It means generating an alert on their mobile phone and grabbing their attention for a few seconds, unlike what happens on social media where we compete with mysterious algorithms and a video of our favorite nephew's first steps.
Additionally, there are gambling data vietnam applications like Mailchimp that allow you to start creating your database for free and sending segmented email marketing campaigns.
6. Get influencers who connect with your cause
It's important to make something clear here. When we talk about influencers, we're not talking about paying the most important athlete or artist in your country to post things about your brand. No.
In this case, we are referring to finding people who believe what you believe as a brand and who are willing to work with you. These people usually have a smaller circle of influence than famous artists and athletes (fewer followers), but much more powerful because their connection with their followers is stronger.
These people have managed to grow in influence largely through their reputation; their followers believe them and know that whatever they post will be because they believe it. Therefore, these influencers will only work with you if they believe in your cause.
7. Ask your followers to generate content
If you're really on a tight budget, one of the decisions you may have to make is whether to pay for that Facebook ad or hire that graphic designer to create the images you need.
One way to avoid this dilemma is to get good content from other sources, and what better source than your own followers?
Run a photo contest, ask them to write stories for your blog, here you will have to be creative and apply the knowledge you have about your buyer persona .
If your own followers generate content, you will win twice as much : you will have content that really connects with your target audience and speaks to them in their own language, and you will have more data to build a better buyer persona for the future.
In conclusion…
It is possible to be successful in digital marketing on a tight budget. The important thing is to know what you want to achieve and what are the most important actions that will help you get there.
Once you have this clear, what remains is to decide the distribution of that budget.
Remember, whatever you decide, never stop measuring the results of the actions you take and analyzing whether they are contributing to your strategy in the way you expected. If so, congratulations; if not, you will have to find out why.
Where would you start? Would you run online advertising campaigns? Would you revamp your website? Would you pay for a CRM? Maybe all of the above…
Unfortunately, this is not a real scenario. The truth is that every person who works in marketing knows that their main job is to bring in as many customers for the company (more money) with the smallest possible budget.
So, here are seven tips to help you accomplish your mission.
How to make the most of your marketing budget?
1. Choose your priorities
With limited resources, it is necessary to focus on those activities that contribute most to achieving the goals of our marketing strategy .
Your marketing strategy is what should set the tone here. It tells you what you want to achieve with all your marketing efforts.
Once you have a clear idea of what you want, you can establish which tactics will contribute the most to achieving it. Study what has worked for you in the past and what hasn’t. What has worked for your competitors, what they haven’t done and why they haven’t done it. And most importantly, what your buyer personas are telling you . You can’t set priorities based on beliefs or what “seems logical.”
Look for statistics about your users or customers. Talk to them and find out the best way to reach them.
inbound priorities 2017
2. Write a blog
Having your own blog doesn't require a lot of money. It does require time, yes, but in the long run all your efforts will pay off. A blog helps your company's marketing in many ways , let's look at a few:
[mkdf_unordered_list style=»circle» animate=»no» font_weight=»normal»]
It helps your website's SEO as it allows you to position specific keywords for your niche (long tail keywords).
It allows you to establish yourself as an authority on a topic and create a knowledge base that will always be available to anyone with that need.
Open a communication channel with your audience. Therefore, when you start your blog, make sure you have a content plan to talk about the problems and needs of your buyer persona and not just about yourself.
[/mkdf_unordered_list]
Additionally, and this is very important, it allows you to obtain data from those who come to your blog and convert those strangers into visitors.
3. Choose your best social channels
Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat… I’m sure I’m leaving out some other social channels. As tempting as it may seem to be on all of them (and those that are about to appear at any moment) it’s not the most efficient way to do it.
I know, I’ve been there and thought: what if I stop posting on _____ (insert social media name of your choice) today and a potential client just happened to be passing by? It’s a trick our minds play on us, because the truth is, it doesn’t work that way.
Working on multiple social networks at once is usually a waste of time, especially for small businesses. This is a (very) limited resource, and we are spending it on tasks that will have little impact on achieving our strategy.
So, take a step back and analyze on the one hand the resources you have: budget, time, skills (editing images, videos, etc.), and on the other hand, the information you have about your buyer persona : where they spend most of their time, how you can best communicate with them.
As a general rule, if you are a B2C business your focus should be on Facebook and Instagram. Whereas if you are a B2B business, you should focus on LinkedIn and perhaps Facebook or Twitter.
4. Pay for online advertising
If you're on a tight budget (and even if you're not), you have to invest in what's really worth it.
In the State of Inbound in Latin America report recently published by Hubspot, only 13% of marketing professionals surveyed referred to digital advertising as an overrated technique.
And if you think that online advertising cannot be applied within the framework of an inbound marketing strategy, we have news for you . For some time now, online advertising and inbound marketing have been reconciled; because in today's reality, online advertising is just a way to attract the attention of our audience to offer them great content that provides them with a solution.
It is important to note that when we talk about online advertising we are mainly referring to PPC advertising on Google, which appears in response to a specific query, and highly segmented advertising on social networks.
In the specific case of social media, the State of Inbound cited above points out that 17% of respondents view organic reach as an ineffective technique. We've already seen this on our Facebook pages: fewer and fewer people are being reached organically. If you thought this was something that was happening only to you, there are numerous reports that prove the opposite : to be successful on Facebook, the best tactic is to pay.
If you followed the advice above, you will have limited your social networks to one or two, making it easier for you to know how much to invest, where and how.
5. Build an email database
We already said it when we talked about the importance of having a blog for a strategy that makes the most of the budget: it is important to obtain data from those who visit your website.
And not just any data, but data that allows us to get closer to our potential customers and move them forward in our sales funnel.
One of the most important pieces of information in this regard (if not the most important) is the email address. Having the email address of those who visit your website will allow you to get in direct contact with them .
Think about it, sending an email means going straight to your buyer persona 's inbox . It means generating an alert on their mobile phone and grabbing their attention for a few seconds, unlike what happens on social media where we compete with mysterious algorithms and a video of our favorite nephew's first steps.
Additionally, there are gambling data vietnam applications like Mailchimp that allow you to start creating your database for free and sending segmented email marketing campaigns.
6. Get influencers who connect with your cause
It's important to make something clear here. When we talk about influencers, we're not talking about paying the most important athlete or artist in your country to post things about your brand. No.
In this case, we are referring to finding people who believe what you believe as a brand and who are willing to work with you. These people usually have a smaller circle of influence than famous artists and athletes (fewer followers), but much more powerful because their connection with their followers is stronger.
These people have managed to grow in influence largely through their reputation; their followers believe them and know that whatever they post will be because they believe it. Therefore, these influencers will only work with you if they believe in your cause.
7. Ask your followers to generate content
If you're really on a tight budget, one of the decisions you may have to make is whether to pay for that Facebook ad or hire that graphic designer to create the images you need.
One way to avoid this dilemma is to get good content from other sources, and what better source than your own followers?
Run a photo contest, ask them to write stories for your blog, here you will have to be creative and apply the knowledge you have about your buyer persona .
If your own followers generate content, you will win twice as much : you will have content that really connects with your target audience and speaks to them in their own language, and you will have more data to build a better buyer persona for the future.
In conclusion…
It is possible to be successful in digital marketing on a tight budget. The important thing is to know what you want to achieve and what are the most important actions that will help you get there.
Once you have this clear, what remains is to decide the distribution of that budget.
Remember, whatever you decide, never stop measuring the results of the actions you take and analyzing whether they are contributing to your strategy in the way you expected. If so, congratulations; if not, you will have to find out why.