Creative Counsel   Branding • Content Creation • Digital Marketing   Matter More™

Cost-Effective Marketing: What Can You Do to Mitigate Spend?

Small businesses have never had the high dollar budgets to saturate markets with campaigns and sponsorships like America’s largest companies. In fact, some smaller businesses I have worked with did not have a separate marketing budget. It’s not a criticism as funding all of the critical areas that a small business must feed in order to grow, such as technology, equipment, training, inventory, etc., has always been a challenge.

As a marketing consultant with over 30 years of supporting small businesses, working intimately with owners and company leaders, I know firsthand how important it is to develop a marketing plan and budget that aligns to corporate strategy and generates measurable results while saving as much as possible on each process or investment.

Here are some ideas that may help you mitigating the cost of a marketing program while retaining or maintaining the creative contributions of an outside agency partner.

Turn your organization into a marketing support system

Could your salespeople, field teams or administrators help offset some of the costs of marketing asset generation? Compiling visual assets from internal team members can save an organization

thousands. You can even incentivize this by creating a monthly contest. If you are a

professional photograph or videographer, I am not suggesting that company employees can achieve the same results you deliver. Furthermore, if the visual assets needed require professional execution, companies should absolutely hire accordingly.

However, many marketing platforms today such as social, email, and web content, within certain B2B industry markets, can address some of the visual requirements of a post or a web content page using internally generated images. It can be impractical for a professional to spend days or even weeks on jobsites when a field team member’s phone pic will suffice for social posts – especially if it meets the expectations of the target audience.

Could these same people manage the administrative aspects of conferences or events, e.g.,

registering attendees and or coordinating booth needs or marketing package options with their agency partners? Communications between stakeholders must be tight, but many hours and dollars can be saved.

Can these same people administer internal printing needs and SWAG programs? Coordinating recurring print materials with local vendors or SWAG item selections with their Internal team members, can save a huge number of hours for agencies who could be better utilizing this time on more high value tasks.

Eliminate mechanical marketing – consider alternatives 

Small businesses sometimes invest in the same conferences, publications, printed materials, etc., without considering how well these tools are working. Although shifting these resources to other options may not represent comparative savings, if the new directions produce measurably better results; a business’s ROI can reflect significant bottom line growth. Of course, this also requires metrics to support decision-making over time.

Juggle marketing tactics versus running monthly digital programs without measurement

Along the same logic, small businesses can sometimes lose track of month by month programs, such as Adwords, SEO or social media campaigns. In fact, I’ve heard that some small businesses invest in these processes without a regular cadence of meetings or consistent reporting. These digital campaigns can all be very effective demand generation platforms, but they may also produce measurable gains with less frequency. It is important to track monthly metrics if a “plug-in and out” method is considered. This will enable you to measure, identify, and mitigate any negative impact from the process.

These ideas are not guarantees that you’ll save money without encountering speed bumps in the results of your marketing investments. In an ideal world, you could go with higher retainers and have all of this managed and produced while you do what you do best. I’m all for that when it’s actionable! However, the reality of small business existence dictates that owners and leaders manage all aspects of their business as resourcefully as possible. My hope is that some of these ideas are new considerations that may help you offset costs without impacting growth.

Creative Counsel offers a no-obligation call to discuss this with companies who are interested in the topic or ones who have defined growth objectives and want to work with an agency who knows how to achieve them. Call Chris Casarona at Creative Counsel, Inc., 609-575-1415. Thank you for reading my content. I hope you found areas of value that you can apply to your company’s marketing – Matter More.