In these challenging times, finding ways to save on advertising and marketing budgets is often a priority. Many businesses are currently seeing a worrying dip in profits: to survive, smart marketing cost management is essential.
We understand how important it is for small business owners to continue to reach out to their target audience at the same time as keeping expenditure to a minimum. To help, we’ve compiled a list of five key marketing areas to focus on in order to achieve maximum results for a greatly reduced outlay.
1. Take the time to overhaul your website and online presence
With sales down across the board in most sectors, it’s time to find ways to pivot your marketing and online strategies. Giving your website a refresh, for example, will put you in a strong position to hit the ground running once lockdown restrictions are at ease and your customers begin to start seeking in your products or services. It’s worth noting though, if you have a brick-and-mortar business, it’s unlikely that they’re going to be able to generate the sales they used to, due to the likelihood of future social distancing measures.
Be prepared! Ensure your website has the capacity to cope with significantly more traffic than it has currently. It’s also crucial that it’s a mobile responsive website, providing an optimal experience for small screen type devices.
At the same time, now is an excellent opportunity to take a look at your online placement ads and assess which advertising methods are giving you the most hits, as well as those which just aren’t working for you.
2. Connect through social media community channels
While it may be timely to consider a suitable social media marketing campaign with associated budgets, cost-conscious businesses can opt for utilising many of the FREE features which social media platforms can offer including utilising organic posts. Given that most people (including your audience), are spending more time on social media channels during these difficult times, it’s important to make sure your online presence is strong and up to date with current trends.
3. Consolidate your market and your target audience
Now is the time to really hone in on your target audience that gives you the most frequent and biggest sales. Take the time to research your audience: what are their demographics? Behaviours? Interests? Concentrate on the target group who are most likely to buy and make them the focus of your marketing campaigns. In a less stressed marketplace, it would make sense to chase outliers and less promising prospects: in the present-day environment, concentrating on maximum ROI is your main priority.
4. Provide value to your audience
This present situation is enormously stressful for your local community, including your customers. Showing that you’re there for them now not only ensures your brand remains highly visible, it also positively enhances your reputation.
If there are ways to help your audience, whether that’s through sharing virtual activities, running a competition, uploading a lockdown team video or providing useful tips in your area of expertise, now is the time to do it. Social media is a particularly useful avenue for this type of low-key, empathetic marketing.
5. Give your website content a makeover
As the economic situation gets tougher, the need to return high in Google search rankings becomes ever more imperative. A thorough website SEO audit is an excellent starting point. This will give you an idea of how your website ranks in Google search results. In order to have your site ranking well, it’s crucial to have quality content written for your web pages, and structurally it needs to be optimised for Google crawlers to understand. Following these top tips on how to create website content will have you well on your way to driving traffic to your website.
Once it’s clear which keywords and phrases are working best, ensuring they’re included in stunning content is going to make a measurable difference to your ranking over time. Whether you write the content yourself or hire a professional copywriter to do the job, make sure that it’s relevant, genuinely useful, well-written and SEO optimisation is in place.
Excellent content in posts, blogs or web pages is key to success. As well as curating your own content, reaching out to others with the offer of a guest blog post with appropriate backlinks could also provide a profitable, free marketing opportunity.
Conclusion
Being in business ourselves, we understand first-hand just how challenging the situation is at the moment. But we are here to help! If you are in any need of digital marketing advice, do reach out to us so we can organise a free strategy session to have you stay afloat in business during these times.