How to Get the Most Bang for Your Marketing Buck!

The need to get the most value in return for what a business spends on their marketing is gaining even greater focus as the economy continues to struggle. Evaluating which methods have more success in attracting and converting new business in their industry for the least amount of effort and cost is particularly of interest. Many marketing platforms allow measurement of your marketing efforts, which helps make this process much easier. But what methods are you focusing on when marketing your business? Here are four ways to spend your marketing time and money to get the most return for your marketing dollars:

1. Email Marketing –
   1. Build your subscriber list and never stop adding to it. If you don’t have one already, create a blog subscription sign-up box on the home page of your website and your blog. Ensure that it explains the value of why they should subscribe to help entice visitors. Don’t miss the opportunity to have virtual event attendees subscribe (and in-person attendees as well, when they return) to your emails/newsletter at the time you collect their contact information so you can do post-event follow ups.
   2. Be meaningful. Use irresistible subject lines that stand out and speak to them directly. Be sure that your emails sound like they were written by a real person who cares. Target the content so it resonates with their needs and interests. By being meaningful, readers will be more apt to respond to your emails and engage with your business.
   3. Include interesting links and calls to action. Include visually striking buttons with text that gives readers more than one opportunity to interact. The more exciting the action you describe, the more enticing it will be to your audience.
   4. Make it easy to unsubscribe. Be sure to make it easy for your reader to opt out, otherwise they’ll flag your emails as spam. That will not only mean losing this prospect, it can also cause you problems down the road if you are flagged by too many and are probably by definition becoming an actual spammer (harsh, but true!).
   5. Test! Test! Test! before you send. Make sure your emails look properly formatted on different platforms including mobile devices before you finalize and send them. If you want to be sure all looks perfect on every platform, consider Litmus, a tool that tests and provides screenshots of your email in dozens of different email tools. Be sure that all your links work and open the way you want them, and the personalization is correct before you hit the “send” button. Not only will that help you achieve your goal of engagement, it’s also incredibly important so you will avoid making your brand look unprofessional.
   6. Provide value. Stay top of mind and memorable by only sending content that is educational, informational. Operational messages about your service, or marketing messages about new or updated products and services that you offer need to be of real value before you decide they’re good enough to send.
2. Social Media –
   1. Check out what your competition is doing. Gain some insight by reviewing your competitors’ social presence. You’re not looking at their channels to copycat or steal from their ideas, but instead, you want to determine what is working for them and what conclusions you can draw to adapt your own campaigns.
   2. Respond to any engagement immediately. When posting on social media, visitors expect speedier responses and you should not leave any comment that someone makes about your brand sitting there unattended. "Social" media is all about engaging with customers and prospects, so be sure to monitor your social media platforms as often as possible. If you use social media monitoring tools, they will help you keep things organized and allow you to respond around-the-clock.
   3. Create consistent and engaging content. Based on your goals and brand identity, think about creating a theme to help drive how and what you publish. Perhaps you cycle between memes, product photos and user-generated content while sticking to a rotating color scheme. Check out how Profitec does exactly that on their Instagram platform.
      

Think about a one-minute long video to help engage your audience. Video continues to dominate the social space, so why not give it a try?

3. Repurpose existing content – Salma Jafri, writing for Search Engine Watch, says it best:
   
   

The biggest roadblock to most people is finding the time to create new and compelling content. Repurposing existing content that has historically performed well saves you a lot of time in the content creation process. The trick is that you need to get your existing content into the hands of more people! But how?

Review your most popular posts. Check your analytics to see which posts have performed the best in the past month and the past year. Can you expand on that topic? Has something changed with that information or have you learned more that you can share? You can refresh and repost a new blog post, a guest blog post, turn it into an infographic, create an ebook from a series of posts on a similar topic, or craft a daily email or podcast series to create an opportunity to collect new leads and subscribers. Repurposing content also boosts your SEO when targeting keywords and this quality content can then earn you quality backlinks back to your site, which is all beneficial for your online brand footprint and visibility.

4. Create integrated marketing communications –

By carefully linking together all forms of communications and promotional tools, you’ll ensure that they’re all working together toward a common goal. To accomplish this, it’s important that your marketing team communicates often about what projects and campaigns they’re working on, making sure they complement each other to create a positive and unified brand experience for your audience.

Check out Southwest Airlines “Transfarency” campaign. The airline uses television, radio, print and digital assets to demonstrate how customers will pay for things like checked bags, flight changes and snacks and drinks. The airline has a microsite for their Transfarency campaign that showcases the value customers will receive by choosing Southwest over other airlines. It includes several sections of informational and fun content, like:

1. 1. #FeesDontFly comparison of Southwest and their competitors
   2. “Fee or Fake” game that tests customers’ knowledge of surprising fees they will encounter with competitors
   3. “Dear Southwest” Mad Libs-style letter that boasts Southwest’s status as the only US airline that doesn’t charge checked bags or change fees
   4. “Fee Hacker” section that parodies how customers can avoid fees with other airlines

Integrating your marketing campaign means forgetting about the silos of traditional marketing and thinking instead about putting together a cohesive campaign that makes it easy for your audience to transition between channels. This includes elements such as:

1. 1. Use your email signature to include your social media sites, a link to your website, a link to a webinar invite or video links.
   2. Incorporate social sharing buttons on your blog and your website to make it easy to spread the word.
   3. Optimize your landing pages for SEO and specific keywords.

These suggestions include having the capability of knowing what is working already. If you aren’t using tools to help you understand what is working for your business, consider downloading HubSpot’s Free Tools. Many companies begin with the free HubSpot CRM because it’s a good starting point to organize your contacts and begin email marketing to them easily. It can also be built upon to help you organize and measure your sales and marketing efforts. When every dollar you earn needs to be spent smartly, HubSpot is easy to work with and allows you to easily control your content without being a programmer. Plus, there are HubSpot Partners like us to help guide you through the process, offering as little or as much support as you might need. Download our FREE Guide to Recession Marketing to help you market wisely in 2020.