Whether you’re a small company just getting started or you’ve simply had a bad year, having a small marketing budget is not the end of the world, and this is true no matter how crowded your niche or industry might be. Below are some expert tips for getting the most out of every single one of your marketing dollars.

Make Sure You Actually Have a Budget

Getting the most out of a small budget means that you’ll need to create a budget to start with. There’s nothing wrong with starting small and working your way up but setting aside some money to market your company to the masses is very important. It’s simple to do and involves understanding things like your sales funnel, your operating costs, and your current growth stage. With this information in mind, you can create a decent budget no matter how large or small your business might be.

Don’t Try to Do it All

One of the biggest mistakes you can make involves attempting to be a jack of all trades. This is especially true when it comes to social media. Too many very small businesses take on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and even Snapchat and truly believe they need to have a budget in place that covers all of those. If you try to be social on all these platforms, it will likely backfire. Instead, plan and budget for only one social channel, but be really good at that channel. Look at the different platforms and then consider your business practices and industry before you make up your mind.

Organic is Nice, but Paid Social Rounds Things Out

There’s nothing like organic engagement when it comes to Facebook, but the truth is that for most small businesses, organic just isn’t enough. You’re going to need to take the pay to play route here, especially in the beginning. Fortunately for you, boosted posts and Facebook ads are some of the most affordable out there, and they really are effective at helping you reach your target demographic, too. Most small businesses spend about $250 to $500 per campaign and they get a pretty decent ROI.

Email Marketing is a Must Have

There are plenty of people out their claiming that email marketing is dead (and has been for a while), but this is simply not the case. You should absolutely invest your money into email marketing and stop worrying yourself with direct mail altogether. You may feel comfortable advertising in the newspaper or phone book, but email has a much broader reach. Per Harvard Business Review, email marketing is 100 times cheaper and performs 95% better. Let that soak in and then shred your direct mail.

A small marketing budget can absolutely help you grow, but only when you’ve taken the time to come up with one – and only when you follow a few simple tips and tricks. Don’t overwork yourself and focus on the things that matter. Choose one social platform and if you haven’t already, start email marketing today. It will make all the difference – especially on a small budget.

When it comes to marketing, you can reach more customers with the more money that you have to spend. Because of this, your bottom line can be directly affected by how efficiently you manage your marketing budget.

Keeping costs on less important aspects of your marketing strategy low and the ones that yield results high is crucial. We’ll introduce you to five key methods to controlling your marketing budget and getting the most out of it.

1. Form Strategic Business Partnerships

Co-op marketing and strategic business partnerships are an effective way to increase the mileage you get from your marketing efforts. Working with businesses that are also attempting to reach your target demographic can help you reach a larger number of potential customers.

If an airliner were to reach out to a chain of hotels, they could have a synergistic relationship reaching customers planning flights and overnight stays. In this example, working together to promote both businesses would benefit each without direct competition.

2. Don’t Overspend on Outside Talent

You won’t always have the right member on your team for everything that needs to be done. When that time comes, it’s important to hire to right person for the right job.

It’s also equally important to keep in mind the right person for scope of the job. It’s not always important to hire the foremost expert when the scope of your project is local versus national. Keeping your budget and goals in mind during hiring outside talent is a large part of keeping your spending in line.

3. Repurpose Content in Your Online Strategy

If you’re at all overlooking your online marketing strategy, now is the time to give it its due focus. For many businesses, their website and social media presence is equal to their lifeblood. To strengthen your online efforts, you can take existing content and reuse it.

Press releases and ad copy can be cataloged, keyword optimized and published on your website. That content can then be used for social media promotions and to gain visitors from SEO. In this way, everything that you create is working twice for your business.

4. Reuse Advertising Content in Other Ways

Not every ad revision and draft makes it into circulation. Chances are you have more than a few recently rejected ideas that can be reused in other ways.

You can use ad imagery and copy for your annual report, or even go as far as to use a scrapped idea for another campaign with some slight tweaking. Time is money in business, and the same is definitely true when it comes to marketing.

5. Do as Much Inhouse as Possible

You yourself are the key ingredient to your marketing strategy’s success or failure. If it makes sense, doing some tasks yourself can save both time and money.

Tweaking website copy, publishing press releases, or doing A/B split testing of landing pages are all made simple with tools online. Anything that doesn’t come natural can then be outsourced to a virtual assistant.

Small businesses especially need to keep tabs on all aspects of their marketing budgets. Reaching as many customers as possible is crucial when achieving growth and business goals.  In the never ending struggle to keep your business working smoothly, having a good sense of what works and what doesn’t can make all the difference.

Author:

Nick Rojas is a self-taught, serial entrepreneur who’s enjoyed working with and consulting for startups. He concentrates on teaching small and medium-sized enterprises how best to manage their social media marketing and define their branding objectives. You can follow him on twitter as @NickARojas