Witchy Ways to Stretch Your Spend: Bewitching Marketing on a Budget

As all good marketers know, there is no such thing as a “silver bullet” in marketing. We are often faced with very limited resources and do not have the budget to spend on massive campaigns across millions of channels. These types of campaigns take a lot of money and time. So, what do you do when you’ve got a BIG objective and a very narrow budget? Here are five ways to stretch your budget and still maximize your ROI.

Check for Waste

Are there any non-productive initiatives in your campaign that you can remove? Or are you checking all outsourcing options to find the best price for the best quality? For reference, we once had a client who was putting on an event. This client spent three times the average amount for a photographer without checking for competitive quotes. Turns out, the photographer had quoted an exorbitant sum to deter the client from choosing him, as he did not want the gig. To the photographer’s dismay, no one at the client bothered to get competitive quotes, so they ended up hiring the photographer. The sum of money used to hire the exorbitantly priced photographer could have been leveraged much better, adding to the event experience. Get competitive quotes. Make sure you’re comparing apples to apples in terms of quality, but it always makes sense to get a feel for the market rate. Find the waste in your campaign.

Improve your Communication

Communication is key when it comes to marketing. For example, there was once a client who had not communicated with their other departments who were contributing to the same event. Due to the lack of communication, two of the departments rented the same exact furniture twice to occupy the same space. One hand did not know what the other hand was doing. Before you launch into something, check with the other stakeholders. See if expenses can be shared rather than duplicated.

Find Audience Overlap with Other Non-Competitive Vendors

Splitting the cost of a sponsorship often doesn’t reduce your exposure but halves your cost. This is a safe and effective way to save money while maximizing your opportunities. Host organizations typically don’t mind, as they get their revenue all the same without any extra sales effort. As an added benefit, you get the exposure to the client/prospect list of a vendor that compliments your brand/product. The right partnerships go a long way in most industries.

Bring in the Right Person/Team

If you’re talking about bringing someone on, do the math to see if a full-time employee or an agency is a better fit. Really evaluate the position that needs to be filled. Be prepared to check your ego. Often, marketing leadership will hire a full-time employee without the workload to keep them busy because they feel they can better manage an employee at the desk next to them over an agency.  If that’s a concern you share – GET A BETTER AGENCY.  Working with a good agency ought to be as seamless as if they were sitting in the office next door. Is it a job that requires multiple skill sets? A jack-of-all-trades is a master of none.  An agency can give you a fractional digital marketer, a fractional graphic designer, and a fractional content developer, likely for the cost of hiring ONE person who is only okay at all those things.

Dive Deeper into Fewer Proven Channels

Instead of spreading your budget across many channels, focus your spending on two or three of your best-performing channels.  If you consider that on average, people need three touchpoints to act, it’s better to hit one person three times than three different people once.  Assuming there’s not a ton of overlap between your channels, you may not reach all of your audience, but the people that you do get exposure to are more likely to engage.

Conclusion

The key takeaway is not to limit your outreach but to find niche ways to maximize your budget and reach your audience.