What should you do with extra marketing budget?

It’s not every day that a company ends up with a bargain. But, when it does happen, it’s almost always a good idea to put it into marketing. Here are four ways to put that extra cash to good use.

Define your customer, including demographics, geography, and other attributes, such as financial profile, challenges, motivations, places they visit, web searches they perform, and all characteristics psychographics. Then, with that intelligence, create a character. This task involves the whole team and helps them understand the community of people you want to reach.

Use all the tools at your disposal to create this customer profile. Aggregate all the data you have, such as mailing lists and analytics related to website activity. It’s your precious infrastructure. Review your existing customers and understand how long your customers took to buy, why they bought, challenges they solved when they bought from you. You can also explore their order sizes and whether there have been any trends over time, as well as customer satisfaction levels. Review transaction details; how and when did they buy from your company?

Think about the personality that emerges from this data and how they make purchasing decisions. Define the buying process so you know what you want customers to do when they see your message. With this knowledge, you will develop your ability to create messages that will inspire your customers to take action.

Once you have gathered this essential information, use it to make decisions. Who is your target audience? What’s the best way to target them? What can you expect when marketing rolls out? How will you measure success?

Create a structure for your campaign targeting, including details about who you’ll target, how you’ll reach them, and what you plan to do while the marketing is underway. Test what you think will happen, and by making that decision you will know whether you succeed or fail.

Finally, ask yourself if you want to budget the money for a longer period or if you want to blitz the market with messages. Depending on your goals, you may decide to employ different strategies. If you have the time, it might be a good idea to focus on value-driven content marketing. If you have money, focus on advertising.

3. Put this strategy into action

Once you’ve rolled out your strategy and the message is out in the market, you’ll want to track what’s working. Study analytics to learn more about your business and the type of messages, images, and media that work. These are critical factors that allow you to adapt and improve, and ultimately succeed.

Repeat this process until you have a methodology you can rely on that brings you the success you seek. Over time, you will develop powerful marketing insights that will help you grow your business.