Sometimes a business is small or in the start-up phase and necessarily has a small marketing budget. But a small budget can still be allocated wisely such that your business is meeting potential customers throughout their path-to-purchase and effectively converting.
To best and most effectively allocate a small marketing budget for success across the customer journey, you should work to prioritize channels and tactics that align with your audience’s needs at each stage, focusing on high impact, cost effective options including organic search, social media content, reviews, targeted e-mail campaigns, and re-targeting ads; while constantly analyzing performance data to optimize your spend.
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As a small business with a limited marketing budget, it is important to accept that marketing is a long game. Small budgets require patience and realistic expectations. Undertaking this challenge requires a strategic approach where you carefully assess your options and make informed choices toward long-term success.
Here are some key steps to effectively allocate your small marketing budget:
- Understand Your Audience: Deeply analyze your target customer to identify their buying cycle and which channels they actively use to engage with brands.
- Identify Key Customer Journey Stages: Breakdown the customer journey into distinct phases including awareness, consideration, purchase, and retention.
- Set Clear Goals: Define specific, measurable marketing objectives for each stage of the customer journey, like brand awareness, review ranking, and conversion rates.
- Prioritize High ROI Channels:
- Awareness Stage: Utilize display advertising (print and digital), organic search, and boosted social media content to reach a broad audience, build brand awareness and the trust and credibility needed to be included within the consideration set of your potential customers.
- Consideration Stage: Leverage content marketing, reviews, email marketing, and targeted social media and search ads to engage potential customers with valuable information and move them to consider you as their provider of choice.
- Purchase Stage: Focus on re-targeting ads, e-mail campaigns with special offers, customer feedback initiatives including reviews, and optimized landing pages to drive conversions.
- Retention Stage: Implement loyalty programs including personalized e-mail sequences to retain and upsell existing customers.
From there, leverage data-driven insights to help you track key performance metrics including click-through rates (CTR), conversion rates, and cost-per-acquisition to identify what works and what doesn’t, allowing you to adjust your budget allocation effectively.
Some further cost-effective tactics to consider include:
- Content Marketing: Create high-quality blog posts, videos, and infographics to attract and educate potential customers. As well, always be sure to solicit reviews and recommendations from your customers and engage with them online.
- Social Media Engagement: Actively participate on relevant social media platforms to build brand awareness and community.
- SEO Optimization: Improve your website’s ranking on search engine results pages to attract organic traffic.
- Maximize Local Marketing: Utilize Google My Business to increase your visibility to local customers at no extra cost.
- Workshops and Webinars: Establish your business as the authority within your business category by hosting/attending events and offering free workshops. Build trust with your target audience and build your brand via direct interaction.
Continuously experiment with different marketing tactics and channels to find what resonates most with your audience.
A small budget, allocated effectively, can help grow your business. With only a limited budget, it’s best to:
- Pick one social media channel and do it well.
- Get creative with content and visuals.
- Invest in e-mail marketing instead of direct mail.
- Pay to play in display advertising, social media advertising, and search.
- Align these tactics with the customer path-to-purchase.
Given the myriad platform and media choices available to small business today, its easy to spread yourself too thin. Evaluate and choose your tactics wisely and track your performance persistently. Concentrate your efforts on those tactics that best engage and advance your customers throughout the sales funnel and don’t be afraid to experiment. Just do so wisely.
If you’d like to learn more about how best to utilize a limited marketing budget, please give us a call or email us here at Sentinel Solutions.
We are experts in media and effectively incorporating these tactics into the marketing mix. We can help you build a compelling campaign that engages your audience and drives sales, regardless of your budget.
Give us a call if we can help at 603-352-5896 or e-mail to Advertising@SentinelDigitalSolutions.com. We’re here to help you succeed.
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