Do you know how much the average business marketing budget is?
It’s around 7.7% of a company’s total revenue, making it one of the most expensive aspects of your business. The good news is that this figure is falling – and has been for a few years – which proves that you don’t need to spend a fortune on a good marketing strategy.
This is something a lot of small businesses struggle with. If you own a small business, you know the power of a killer marketing strategy. It’s the only way you get your name out into the world, so there’s a tendency to spend, spend, spend!
You don’t need to do this. A massive marketing budget eats into your profit margins and can make all the added attention worth nothing. Keep scrolling, and you’ll see a host of thrifty ways to save money on your marketing strategy while still making it effective.
Prioritize Organic Growth Strategies
A marketing strategy is full of different techniques, though we can split them into two categories:
- Organic growth
- Paid growth
The latter refers to marketing techniques that only work when you pay for the results. E.g. Pay-per-click advertising. This concept fosters great online growth and drives traffic to your site, but you’re constantly paying every time someone clicks on your ads.
Organic growth strategies are different. They might require some upfront investment, but they generate attention and leads without you constantly paying for them. Two of the best examples include SEO and social media marketing. SEO helps your website appear in search engines, which naturally draws more traffic to it. Social media lets you connect with your target demographic, raise brand awareness, and point more users to your site.
You’re not paying for growth in these instances; it comes naturally. If you cut down on paid growth strategies and put more attention on organic ones, you’ll start whittling down your marketing budget.
Use The Same Piece Of Content Multiple Times
There’s nothing wrong with repurposing or editing existing content.
It’s your content, so you can do whatever you want with it. While originality is key, there are ways to use the same piece of content multiple times while still making it somewhat original. That might sound impossible, but you can do it by:
- Editing and changing older blog posts
- Converting content into different formats
Google loves it when you update your site with fresh content. However, it sees “new content” as any change to your website. This tells it you’re keeping your site updated, which encourages it to recommend your site to other users. Going in and editing an older blog post will signal a page update that gives your website a boost. You can add a new section, update it to make it more relevant at the current time, and so on. It saves money by not needing to pay someone to create a completely new piece of content all the time.
Content repurposing is arguably even better. Take a blog post and convert it into an infographic for social media. It’s the same work, just presented in a new way to a different audience. The same post can then be turned into a video for YouTube – or an old video can be turned into a written guide.
Make good use of old content to flesh out your marketing strategy without relying on new stuff all the time. It reduces your need for content creators, which will save you a fortune over time.
Outsource Instead Of Building A Marketing Team
A single person can’t create a marketing strategy on their own. You need outside help, and this might push you to build a marketing team. It’s a common approach; you hire new team members to provide marketing assistance.
With that in mind, have you ever considered the costs of building a marketing team? A three-person team with average salaries can set you back $255,000 a year! It’s starting to look like a massive expenditure – but is there a cheaper alternative that still provides the same results?
Yes, and it’s called outsourcing.
You all know what outsourcing means, but the costs of outsourcing your marketing work are significantly less than those of hiring an in-house team. It simply makes more sense, and you can choose which services you need. Maybe you don’t need a team of copywriters because you can do that on your own. However, you do need SEO specialists, so you pay an agency or a freelancer to take care of this.
It’s still an ongoing cost, but it’s sometimes well over half the price of building a team.
Leverage The Power Of AI Content
Don’t shy away from AI content in your marketing strategy. It might seem like an evil thing, but there’s a time and a place for AI. Systems like ChatGPT will immediately be helpful in coming up with and producing content ideas for your marketing campaign. You can even get AI to make drafts of content pieces before you edit and write them yourselves.
As long as you use AI content wisely – and don’t copy and paste entire chunks onto your website – you won’t see any detrimental effects. The only worry is that you get falsely flagged for AI content after taking ideas and writing them yourself. This happens quite frequently, but an AI text humanizer will help you solve the issue. It ensures your content sounds more natural and gets rid of any elements that may seem AI-generated.
How does this save money? Because AI helps you come up with ideas without wasting valuable time or outsourcing to freelance content writers. You can do more stuff by yourself, meaning you spend less money outsourcing.
Place More Attention On Customer Retention
One short and sweet point to end things: focus on customer retention more than customer acquisition.
You need to build trust with your customers and convince them to keep returning. The value of a returning customer is far better than that of a new one. Repeat customers are likely to spend more money – but they also help you acquire new customers anyway. Their positive reviews drive more people to your site, and you can even use referral programs to encourage existing customers to recommend your business to their friends/family.
Retaining customers also costs a lot less than gaining them, hence the budget savings.
Don’t let your marketing strategy get out of hand and drain all of your financial resources. If you spend too much, then you won’t reap the rewards. These ideas help you slash the costs while still producing a winning marketing campaign.
