Simon Francis, CEO at Flock Associates, offers advice on maximising your marketing budget
Marketing budgets never seem big enough or go far enough. In order to help you with this, we have provided six essential ways to help your marketing budget go further and increase your efficiency.
1. Analyse and gain insight
The majority of the senior marketers we come across are dissatisfied with their ability to measure marketing ROI. They measure everything, and have enormous amounts of data sitting around, but little ability to get the right insight from this data. Really understanding marketing analytics will enable you to be more efficient and minimise wasted spend. Make sure you have the right resources and people who will understand your data and can translate it into an actionable plan.
With the data available through real-time sales, customer relationship management, SEO, social media, paid search marketing and new software products it is easier than ever to analyse and measure marketing strategies. To increase the effectiveness of your campaigns one of the most important parts should be what you can learn from it.
2. Mobile media
Today’s audience is always on their phones. We live in a fast paced, digital, shrinking world – therefore there is a need to connect with people online even more, and mobile should be an integral part of your strategy.
There is a strong demand for information and knowledge. People are always checking their social media feeds. People check their phones constantly, while watching television, when they are stuck in traffic during the school run, even when they are meant to be taking a break on holiday. Companies need to embrace this and understand their customers’ mobile habits.
An effective way of reaching your audience on their mobiles for very little money is social advertising, you can target through age, jobs, interests, location etc. and ensure that the right people see them, at the right time, in the right place.
Finally, make sure all your content is mobile friendly to encourage engagement and sharing. Can your videos be seen on a mobile screen? Is your photography briefed to be easy to see on the small screen?
3. Earned media
Google, Baidu, Yandex and other search engines have opened up the world of content marketing to brands. SEO is a strategy of using metadata, keywords, links and a solid content strategy to improve your ranking in search engines, and get your content and site found. This can replace paid media.
Research has proven many times that people who search for something on Google most often click the first link, then the second and then rarely or not at all anything below that. It’s also widely known that visits to your website via relevant content often attract higher levels of engagement. Get your content strategy right and use SEO to your advantage, SEO is not a nice-to-have for marketers anymore, it is business critical.
4. Stop silo syndrome
Traditionally, the only two stakeholders interested in integration are the CMO and the customer; everyone in between is usually incentivised to only succeed within their silo. If you break down the silos you’ll begin to see benefits such as better integrated marketing, information sharing and less wasted time and resource through less duplication. Everyone in the marketing department should have an interest in making sure that all marketing is integrated, and focused around one common thing: the customer.
Set common goals and objectives. Silos are bad for communication, integration, brand and message consistency, and guess who suffers from this disintegration? Your customer. Through adopting a collaborative culture, processes and tools, plus smart contracts and appraisals, silo syndrome can be kept in check and create greater value for the company. Also think hard about things such as integrated briefings.
5. Focus, focus, focus
Companies, particularly smaller businesses, very often make the mistake of trying to do too much. Too many products supported, with too many marketing channels, too often. In a super cluttered and competitive world, this often leads to sub-optimal effects. It can be very difficult to say ‘no’ to new opportunities, but resist.
Our best tips:
• Accurately define your objectives and target audience and focus your marketing campaigns on the best, narrowest, opportunities, with well-integrated and focused campaigns.
• Develop tactics that hit your objectives and will result in a clear, concise plan.
• Identify key messages you want to communicate keeping them consistent throughout your material.
6. Planning ahead
Take the time to sit down and put together a marketing plan for the following year. It is amazing how often key events are started late, without the right resources. Putting together a detailed content plan will help maintain the marketing budget.
Finally, involve your agencies in the planning process, do not wait until the last moment to share your plans with them. Talk to them about your objectives and they will be able to advise on the best strategy, and how to integrate their activities properly into the overall plans.
