Yes, you need to spend money to make money, but you don’t need to bust your budget to do it. You can find all kinds of ways to cut your costs, and still have great marketing campaigns. The trick is to find the tools that will help you to do this. Here are some suggestions that can help.
Cut Back on Marketing Campaigns
If you have campaigns that aren’t delivering results, cut them. They aren’t doing you any good. You will need to do some math to see which campaigns are truly working and which are not. Use hard numbers, and if you don’t have them, make educated guesses. It is often good to use Excel or other similar tools. Sit down and take a look at what you are doing. For instance, if you are not getting a lot of business by doing tradeshows, it is time to find another way to market your business. Some of the tools you can use to cut back on your programs include:
Google Analytics – This is an important tool that you need to install on your website. If you don’t already have it, install it now. It will help you see which programs are the most effective.
Marketing Automation Tools – This will give you even more insight than what Google Analytics can offer. You will learn more about each visitor to your website, as well as prospects. Get the details you need to find out which campaigns are working, from cold leads to actual sales. Don’t forget to look into savings on software. Check out the great deals at Cloudswave.
CRM Systems – Use these tools to record the actual opportunities from prospects. You will be able to connect with CRM platforms and match opportunities to campaigns that produce the leads. This tool allows you to learn the return on your marketing costs for each campaign, so you can get rid of those that are not working for you.
It is also a good idea to keep promotions clean and professional, not flashy and loaded with images. Give your customers the fact in a straightforward manner that they can easily read and understand. Most customers want facts, not glitz.
Cut Back on Resources
If you want to be cost-efficient, your resources need to be aligned with your core strategy. Set up a Marketing Skills Dashboard. This is a diagnostic tool that will help keep your team aligned with the things that will make your business grow over the next year or two. The first thing to do is to figure out what your main business drivers are. These can be market share, customer loyalty, etc. Then, match these drivers to your team members who have the best skills. This is going to help increase your profits, and make your business more focused. Trim resources, move people around, etc. to make your marketing campaigns more successful.
Try Outsourcing
You can save a lot of money by outsourcing many areas of your business, including manufacturing, customer service, and accounting. This allows you to get what you need without having to pay full or part-time employees regular wages. You may even want to try hiring freelancers for some jobs. You will be spending much less money while getting great results. It may even be that your employees don’t have all of the skills needed for some campaigns, and it will be cheaper and more efficient to outsource for these jobs. Always be sure to use non-compete and non-disclosure agreements when outsourcing.
Image Source: Kristina Alexanderson
