How To Reduce Your Marketing Costs

Reducing marketing costs is a priority for many businesses, small and big. Finance experts, not marketers, suggest a healthy marketing budget should be between 5-12% of the business’s total revenue. Yet, most small businesses fail to invest in marketing.

What is essential here is, that your company will fail if you cannot feed it with sales opportunities. Hence, your company needs to be active in marketing and sales. By marketing your business correctly, you gain exposure, drive awareness, generate trust, increase web traffic, and create leads. Your sales team will thank you for it.

In addition, the more efficient you become, the more you reduce your customer acquisition costs.

 

 

Websites Are Your Marketing Hub

Less than 64% of companies have a website, and most are not functional out of those with websites. You need an excellent website to reduce your customer acquisition and marketing costs, as this is your marketing hub.

 

So remember, your website is your most precious marketing asset. 70-80% of potential customers would never reach out to a company without a website. If you are a business owner, invest in one.

 

 

We have built many beautiful, functional, and responsive websites for other businesses. If you need help with building yours, click here.

 

 

You might ask, so how do you reduce your marketing costs if there are no marketing expenses? The answer is simple. There is no way to cut down from zero.

 

 

You Need To Invest In Marketing

 

However, not spending on marketing does mean you are selling your business short and doing a disfavor to your company. Most businesses fail due to a lack of sales (or funding, which you still have to sell to investors to get their funds).

 

 

To Invest in Marketing or Not? That is the question

 

 

After all, all business owners start a company to grow it. Therefore, marketing is the only way to do so. If done correctly, it will yield your sales team the opportunity to expand the business exponentially.

 

So, let’s get back to the original question, how do you reduce your marketing costs? You reduce the marketing costs by following best practices (outlined below) or hiring an agency that runs the whole marketing operation for you. So, the short answer is to hire a marketing agency.

 

 

Develop a Marketing Plan To Reduce Marketing Costs

 

 

Benjamin Franklin once said, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” This quote holds for anything in life, and marketing is no exception. Great marketing starts with a marketing plan.

 

 

Studies Show Half of Businesses Don’t Have a Marketing Plan

A recent study by Outbound Engine revealed that 50% of businesses don’t have a marketing plan. Furthermore, half of the companies don’t have one because it is a daunting task. It requires effort, time, and knowledge to create a comprehensive marketing plan.

 

Unfortunately, most business owners don’t have the time, willingness, and expertise to create one. 86% of business owners would rather spend their time on other business activities than on their marketing. 

 

Therefore, the lack of action makes you miss opportunities; employing effective marketing can reduce marketing costs.

 

 

 

 

The Reasons Why Having a Marketing Plan Is Crucial To Reduce Marketing Costs

 

 

 

Why Is a Marketing Plan Essential? 

Because it provides a clear strategy to follow, so you can successfully reach your target market and create more opportunities to convert prospects into customers. Think of it as your battle plan.

 

• Clear direction. A marketing plan makes you laser-focused to spend all marketing efforts on determining tasks that get you closer to your goals. These tasks have a clear direction and purpose so that you won’t be chasing your tail on non-essential activities.
• Stronger value proposition. Your plan will naturally push you to provide more value to your audience. Your marketing efforts will speak directly to your prospect’s needs, motivations, and challenges. As a result, your audience will have a higher perceived value, driving engagement and action. It also reduces your customer acquisition cost.
• Encourage business growth. The application of your marketing plan will make you more robust, agile, and proactive. It will also give you structure. Disciplined and successful execution of the marketing plan will yield positive results that translate to business growth.
• Free-up time. You will be engaged in working efficiently, in addition to saving you time, and freeing you to complete other business duties.
• More sales. The ultimate goal of any marketing plan results in creating more leads that will convert into more sales, which means more revenue. A marketing plan reduces customer acquisition costs.

 

 

What Does a Marketing Plan Include?

Most importantly, a marketing plan is composed of the following sections:

 

• Executive summary. Here you explain more in detail the company’s overall structure and business model. Next, you do a synopsis of the problems you solve, and your solutions (services and products). Finally, you describe your target market, marketing strategy, sales strategy, value proposition, and competitors.
• Organization’s Values. For your company to behave collectively, it must intrinsically adopt its mission and vision statements. Also, listing the values (adjectives) that represent the business creates a stronger brand.
• Situation Analysis. This analysis comprehends several areas to create a snapshot of where your company stands today. It also looks for current marketing efforts (if any), marketing assets, audiences and target markets, competitor research, touch-points, and SWOT analysis.
• Assumptions. You have to assume certain conditions to be able to create a hypothesis and test your plan.
• Marketing Objectives. Define what you want to measure and what metric you want to reach, and when.
• KPIs. Key performance indicators are measurable points of interest; moreover, this is how you gauge the effectiveness of your plan.
• Resources & Budgeting. You must allocate resources to your marketing efforts and establish them.
• Activity Plan. It would be best if you plan how to bridge the gap between where you are now and where you want to be. Here you discuss your marketing mix and tie it down to different marketing activities. It also lists the other strategies needed to direct these activities, like the content, brand, and automation strategies.

In conclusion, having a marketing plan allows you to save time, use resources, and streamline efforts resulting reduction in marketing costs.

 

 

We can help you create a marketing plan with all this analysis and components, contact us to schedule a call.

 

 

Evaluate Your Branding

 

Subsequently, after you have a plan, it is time to evaluate if your branding represents what you set to achieve. Remember that your branding should be easily identifiable, impersonate your values, and create remembrance. Branding is key to effective marketing.

 

 

Elements That Make a Great Logo

The most significant piece of your branding is your logo. So, first, let’s start here; you must check your logo is:

 

1. Functional. Meaning your logo is scalable, adaptable, and unique.
   1. Scalable. When printed or displayed in different sizes and materials, it remains easy to identify.
   2. Adaptable. Your logo must be able to adapt to different constraints without losing recognition and integrity.
   3. Unique. Your logo must be significantly different to do what a logo does best, make your brand identifiable.
2. Representative. Your business can relate somehow to its logo, so it can transfer this significance to whoever comes in contact with it.

 

For instance, many businesses get too emotionally attached to their first logo. But, unfortunately, this emotional adjunction gets in the way of improving the brand and making it functional.

 

 

Note: Here is a test, give your current logo to someone, make them look at it for 5-seconds, and take it away, hide it completely. Now, ask the person to draw it for you to the best of their ability. As a result, if the logo is simple and functional, the drawing will closely resemble your logo.

 

For instance, consider hiring a graphic designer or an agency to help you create a functional brand.

 

Certainly, after you review your logo, all other branding pieces must be revised and updated to ensure branding is coherent, including your website. Make sure as part of your branding strategy you create a branding manual to ensure you are aligned every time you create a piece.

 

Having great branding saves you time and money as your audience will recognize you faster.

 

 

Evaluate Your Digital Assets

 

 

What are digital assets? Digital assets are the digital properties you own. For example, your website, media library, blog posts, digital platforms, custom web solutions, and social media channels are all digital assets.

 

These items must be thoroughly reviewed and updated to make sure they also follow your plan’s guidelines. If they don’t follow your strategy, you must discard them.

 

Your website is your digital hub. Therefore it needs to be taken care of the most, making it helpful for all its visitors and consistently exemplifying your best practices.

 

 

Marketing Execution

 

 

Your marketing plan must be comprehensive and outline all the activities required to get you closer to your target audience, thus reducing your customer acquisition costs. But, then, it is time to grind! Here is where it gets expensive. The workforce needed to have a smooth marketing operation requires several people with different backgrounds and knowledge.

 

 

Digital Marketing Execution

 

1. Digital Marketing. Being online is crucial to your brand’s reputation. Most people today are at a reach of a smartphone, meaning they are always online. Here is how you reach them:
   1. Website. Above all, your website is the ultimate digital real estate, is your online support, and sales center. Make sure you keep it tidy, compelling, and engaging.
   2. Blog. Blog posts make your website relevant. Therefore, producing appropriate content will help your visitors answer their questions or concerns, making your site more valuable. Also, it aids SEO.
   3. SEO. Businesses want to be on the top of search results; for instance, optimizing content with relevant keywords will make your website visible, driving traffic to your site.
   4. Social Media. It is called social for a reason. Additionally to posting content regularly across your different platforms, you must engage with your audience by commenting, liking, and creating meaningful human interactions.
   5. Content. Creating content that is valuable, engaging, and entertaining is what drives people’s attention. A content strategy is a must to address your audiences’ needs and interests while keeping you focused on your goals. Be creative, be bold, and use different media formats. Remember, keep it fresh.
   6. Email. Communicating and acknowledging people makes them feel unique and familiar with your brand. Moreover, email is crucial to keep your audience informed, updated, and provide value at any possible interaction with your company, even generating sales!
   7. Videos. Other than being in-person, videos are the second-best to being present. Consequently, people expect videos. Create them to communicate more effectively. You illustrate better what you want to say to your audience in a video than in any other media type, making your message clear; this enhances shareability and action.
   8. Ads. Ads used to be a luxury for most businesses, and only big corporations could afford them. Whereas digital ads revolutionized the ad industry, creating opportunities for businesses of any size to connect with their audiences effectively. It allows measuring ad interactions and other data points, unlike expensive traditional advertisements.

 

 

Offline Marketing Execution

 

1. Offline Marketing. Creating coherence online and offline will yield the best results. However, marketing offline will make your efforts tangible, generating a different experience that supports your online marketing. Offline marketing keeps current customers nourished and nurtured.
   1. Personalized Mail. Give your customers the feeling they are unique to you. For instance, send customized mail to evoke empathy and make that relationship stronger.
   2. Direct Mail. Target select areas and reach your audience with local impact.
   3. Billboards. Suppose you are looking to create general local brand awareness fast without paying top dollar. In that case, billboards are one of the most affordable alternatives.
   4. TV, Print, and Radio. These are usually expensive and difficult to measure, but if employed correctly, it produces significant results.
   5. Tradeshows. They will be back, and when they are, make sure to set up a booth, engage with others, create new connections, and generate leads.

 

Your marketing plan must create the most amount of touch-points with your target audience. Also, touch points will drive leads and spark sales opportunities to keep your business growing and your customer acquisition costs down.

 

The best marketing efforts are those that go hand-in-hand with the sales team and work cohesively. Thus, involve your sales team. Ensure your teams align to conceive the best experience possible and the most productive results.

 

 

Marketing Optimization

 

 

Any plan is just a hypothesis, and like any scientific method, the collection of data will yield its findings.

 

Likewise, the endless pursuit of optimization will make you more efficient, producing better results with each iteration.

 

This is what we call effective marketing, continuous monitoring with improvements that reduce your marketing costs and customer acquisition costs.

 

Furthermore, to measure your marketing plan’s results, you must have established a base point. The KPIs outlined are your compass; measure your results against the original KPIs. Analyze what worked and what didn’t; learn from this, incorporate it, and relaunch.

 

For this reason, optimizing will keep you at the forefront, and your company will reap all the rewards. To standardize this, monthly and quarterly reporting is suggested.

 

 

Sales Tie-In

 

Many companies fail to converge the marketing and sales team efforts. As a result, these two departments tend to work independently rather than together. Bringing these two departments to help each other will collect the most benefits.

 

By the same token, the marketing team will need constant and direct communication with the sales team and vice-versa. Communication is critical to sharing findings, tactics, and material.

 

 

Collaboration Is Critical

The marketing team will help the sales team get the voice out, familiarize the prospects with the brand and solutions, engage with the company and finally bring in a lead.

 

Then, the sales team will take it from here on the one-to-one interaction and convert the prospect into a customer. Once you convert a prospect into a client, the marketing team can continue nurturing customers to generate more opportunities from the same patron. Therefore, reducing customer acquisition costs.

 

In like manner, the sales department can work with the marketing department requesting material to design, produce, or communicate.

 

Your company will be more robust if these two departments work together. For instance, most companies have a sales team but not a marketing team. So consider hiring a marketing agency to keep the costs down versus hiring the talent in-house.

 

Your sales team will appreciate incorporating marketing into your business; it will make their job easier and more productive.

 

 

HOW DO YOU REDUCE YOUR MARKETING COSTS?

 

 

First, you need to follow all the best practices previously outlined here. As you can see, there are plenty of tasks to run this operation smoothly.

 

If you are planning on doing this in-house, you will need to bring candidates with great experience and as versatile as possible to reduce costs. So, our best advice is to hire right!

 

 

In-house Marketing Team Composition

A small but solid marketing team should be composed of:

 

1. Marketing Director or Manager. Compensation: $80k – $190k. This person will lay out the foundation, the strategy, the tasks, and manage the team; these are the essential duties. Furthermore, a great candidate will be capable of looking for more opportunities, and creating possible solutions to the problems faced by consumers that your company does not currently address.
2. Copy Writer. Compensation: $50k – $85k. The right candidate will create the copy for all of your marketing pieces, social posts, blog posts, website, sales letters, and all other materials. It must be versatile to incorporate your brand’s personality into all of the writing pieces. With some training, it can help with SEO. It is better to have an SEO specialist. Still, this role can be incorporated later into the team as the company grows.
3. Graphic Designer. Compensation: $49k – $76k. Visual communication is the prime form of human communication; people prefer it over text. A great graphic designer makes communication seamless. It incorporates all the pieces together into an aesthetically pleasing and easy to the digest format.
4. Videographer.  Compensation: $38k – $73k. Video is the most sought media type by consumers today; companies need to produce it to stay relevant. A videographer will help you capture the images per the requested storyboard or script. A videographer usually does not edit footage; you might need to hire a video editor. Also, a videographer might not shoot photos either. You might need a photographer as well.
5. Photographer. Compensation: $41k – $84k. Still images are vital to connecting with consumers. Photographers produce images to be used in different materials and add value to graphical and printed pieces.
6. Video Editor. Compensation: $33k – $43k. Editing video pieces requires mastery of combining audio, video footage, stills, and animations. Piecing together all of these elements is art. A well-composed and edited video will grab the attention of viewers.
7. Digital Campaign Specialists. Compensation: $43k – $82k. Generating demand online requires a great deal of expertise. You need someone who knows how to navigate multiple digital ad platforms and correctly segment your target market. A digital marketing specialist will adhere to the marketing strategy to drive traffic, raise awareness, and generate leads.

 

 

Reasons To Hire An Agency – This Is How You Reduce Your Marketing Costs

 

 

 

A team like this can cost you between $334k to $633k per year or $27.8k to $52.8k per month, just salaries. Then, of course, you still need to add benefits, paid time off, and taxes. And on top of that, you still have to add any investment towards ads and media placements. It can get costly!

 

Consequently, the best alternative is to hire a marketing agency that has an ever-growing team and capabilities. Doing this will bring your costs way down and allow you to get the best marketing possible without the hefty price tag.

 

Going with an agency is how you reduce your marketing costs!

 

We save our customers between 30% to 70% from their direct marketing expenses, which means we save them between $100.2k to $443k a year. So let MoreKeting stand behind you and support your marketing efforts and reduce customer acquisition costs.

 

So, book a free consultation today with one of our experts.

 

 

 

 

 

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