Five Strategies to Maximize your Marketing Budget!
1. Use technology for the heavy lifting in your campaign development process.
Marketers can reduce the time it takes to create and deploy marketing messages through the use of flexible technology like email building tools, dynamic content blocks, and automated responsive design. In addition to optimizing digital marketing processes, these technologies improve personalization and help create customer experiences that consumers love. By thinking ahead
marketers can ensure that any investment in new and existing technology leads to gains in marketing ROI.
2. Use data to find opportunities within your audience
Every marketer knows that it’s easier and cheaper to retain existing customers than to acquire new ones. When budgets are shrinking, brands can make their money go farther by focusing on finding new opportunities within their existing customer.
3. Acquire new customers through referrals
According to Nielsen Research, consumers are four times more likely to buy when referred by a friend. In addition, the Wharton School of Business found that the lifetime value for a new referral customer is 16% higher than that for non-referrals. So, when money is tight or budgets are flat, brands can make the most of their acquisition efforts by using the power of their
own fans to spread the word and recruit new customers.
4. Determine what works through accurate attribution
Attribution is always important, but when a brand has to do more with a smaller budget, it becomes even more crucial to ensure that every dollar is used wisely. Tracking a campaign’s performance is as important as all the work that goes into launching it. Brands with a good handle on attribution can improve performance even on a smaller budget by cutting what’s not working and
redirecting that spend towards more effective programs.
However, a recent study by Econsultancy and AdRoll found that only 39% of brands had implemented attribution on “all or most” of their marketing activities and 70% of businesses struggled to act on attribution insights. These findings indicate a missed opportunity for marketers looking to be smart about their marketing spend.
5. Prepare for shifting buying preferences
Market volatility and other economic factors like wage stagnation can cause consumers to become more cautious and modify their spending habits. Just as your budget may be tightening, consumers may also be working to make their money stretch further. Keeping close tabs on your transactional data will allow you to see patterns and adjust your offers if your customers begin to change
their behaviors and become more frugal.
To be proactive, you can analyze purchase data from periods when consumer spending decreased to identify best-selling product categories that are still appealing to budget-conscious consumers. Ask yourself: did all of your customer segments respond to their budget constraints in the same way or were there different purchasing trends for each segment? Once you have
identified your “frugality-proof” product categories, you can shine a light on them to drive revenue during periods of cautious spending. Even if those times don’t come, there is tremendous value in knowing your ironclad product categories.
Contact: Jeff.Mungo@infogroup.com, 402.836.6278 or 347.675.3695
