17 Ways to Overcome Marketing Budget Limits

One of the biggest challenges for entrepreneurs, small business owners, and marketers today has been how to leverage their marketing dollars as effectively and efficiently as possible. This is especially true at times like these, when we are all dealing with the ramifications of the pandemic, political upheaval and social unrest in the United States and much of the rest of the world.

Due to the recession, many businesses and organizations have reduced their marketing and branding efforts and are adopting a defensive and wait-and-see stance. But is it a smart decision? For various reasons, I would say no. Nonetheless, tighter marketing budgets are a reality for many, at least for now. It is therefore crucial to meet this challenge head-on – intelligently and methodically.

Delivering Smart, Targeted Growth for a Texas County

Wood County is located in beautiful East Texas. The county is probably most famous for its dense pine forests and scenic lakes, especially Lake Fork Reservoir. According to the Chamber of Commerce, Lake Fork is known as “one of the best trophy bass fishing lakes in the world, holding the top six and 33 of the top 50 largest largemouth bass in the state of Texas.” And Wood County has a number of other attractive assets. So how does he use smart marketing to effectively manage his growth, even in a down economy?

In addition to being a successful media executive, entrepreneur and real estate investor, Vic Savelli sits on the Wood County Economic Development Commission (EDC) Board of Directors and chairs its Marketing Committee. Throughout his career, Savelli has worked with hundreds of advertisers – from small local businesses to the largest national advertisers – with annual marketing budgets ranging from thousands to tens of millions of dollars.

“A common mistake made by advertisers, regardless of size, is that during tough times they cut back and in many cases eliminate their advertising budgets altogether,” Savelli said. “The idea is that if sales are down, they need to cut marketing spend to maintain their profit margins. Unfortunately, this tactic will guarantee lower sales and profits in the long run, and when things improve, recovery will be more difficult.”

“The absence of competing advertising messages, however, gives the savvy marketer a distinct advantage,” Savelli added. “Fewer advertisers, combined with less clutter, makes your marketing message stand out more. Economic downturns allow companies to gain market share. Then, when the economy recovers, they can actually be rewarded with a permanent increase in income and profits. .”

“That, of course, doesn’t mean marketers should ignore the pressures of a P&L and budget considerations. But downturns present a unique opportunity to find more effective ways to market your messages. The old ways should be reviews, and if warranted, eliminated in favor of effective gunfire to target the public.”

“For EDC of Wood County, these efficiencies will be achieved by more effectively narrowing its messaging to three main pillars of the target audience: attracting 1) travel and tourism, 2) new residents, and 3) new businesses,” Savelli noted. “By digging deeper into each pillar and determining within those categories who are the most beneficial targets (such as the size of businesses to target and the activities the county offers to tourists), our advertising budgets, marketing messages and materials can be customized to reach only the most important prospects. Also, although the three main pillars are different, they also have commonalities. By identifying these commonalities, it allows some of the creativity to be shared between the targets. And that uniformity increases efficiency.”

Related Article: Agile Marketing to Get Through the Next Recession

17 do’s and don’ts of marketing during a downtime

By expanding on Savelli’s points, marketers can take a number of steps – regardless of the type of business or organization they work for – to address potential budget shortfalls and get the most out of a hard situation. Here are my 17 do’s and don’ts:

1. Review your overall marketing goals and strategies by updating your SWOT analysis. Then make sure your budget is aligned with initiatives that will make the most of your business’s strengths and opportunities while protecting against its weaknesses and threats.
2. Do not spend all your budget on advertising to your customers and prospects. Instead, focus on their education.
3. Figure out what marketing strategies, tactics, and techniques have worked well in the past, then replicate them.
4. Carefully analyze your competitors and determine how you can best compete with them.
5. Don’t try to do everything manually. For example, figure out how you could use marketing automation to improve your conversion rates, create a lean and efficient marketing machine, and become more efficient overall.
6. Organize and analyze your marketing data to look for opportunities to put more emphasis on what works well and lessen the importance of what doesn’t.
7. Develop detailed personas that will allow you to target your marketing campaigns much more strategically.
8. Don’t engage random acts of marketing. Instead, set your priorities based on strategic and tactical initiatives and activities that are compatible with your marketing and brand plan and/or yield the highest return on investment.
9. Spend more time, effort, and money on retaining and upselling your existing customers versus the more expensive route of finding new ones.
10. Repurpose your best-performing content by republishing it in different formats and on different platforms.
11. Don’t try to be active on all social media channels. Choose one or two that best suit your customers and prospects and become very proficient in using them.
12. Experiment with paid advertising campaigns on Google, as well as Facebook, Instagram, and other social platforms. They are much more effective than you might think. Facebook Video Ads can be particularly effective.
13. Try using free press release distribution services, such as OpenPR, IssueWire, NewswireToday, ClickPress, or PR Fire.
14. Don’t forget about email marketing. It’s still one of the most cost-effective ways to reach your customers and prospects.
15. Regularly publish informative and compelling articles on your blog.
16. Encourage word of mouth referrals from your existing customers. For many companies, referrals are the most important source of new business.
17. Use inexpensive freelance help from online services like Fiverr, Upwork, and Guru when it makes sense.

Related Article: Reduce Marketing Spend While Improving Business Performance

A different marketing mindset

Some leaders, especially CEOs and CFOs of small businesses, tend to view marketing and branding as an expense. But I would say it’s quite the opposite in reality. Instead, think of your marketing budget as an investment account that will pay huge dividends by securing the future of your business.

And I’m not the only one to be of this opinion.

As marketing guru Seth Godin so aptly put it, “If you’re marketing from a fairly static annual budget, you’re looking at marketing as an expense. Good marketers realize that it’s an investment.