5 ways to spend less money on marketing

Are you spending too much money on marketing?

A lot of companies go overboard on marketing without getting worthwhile results. For those on a tight budget, here are five ways to spend less money on marketing.

Try some DIY marketing

It’s possible to do a lot of your own marketing – the trick is knowing when do it yourself and when to call the professionals as not every marketing strategy should be DIYed. Getting involved with social media, blogging, email marketing and hosting events are just a few marketing strategies that you can do yourself. This could save you a lot of money in not having to hire professionals.

Hire freelancers

Rather than hiring marketing companies, consider hiring freelancers to take on certain jobs like flyer design and web design. Such professionals will likely charge a lot less, further helping you to save money. Freelancers are likely to take longer as you’ve only got one person working on your marketing rather than a team, but you can usually expect the same level of quality. There are many sites for hiring freelancers.

Pay in instalments

For some forms of marketing, you may be asked to pay a large sum up front. This is usually the case when buying a domain and designing a website. However, there could be ways of paying in instalments instead as is the case with pay monthly websites. This could make such forms of marketing more affordable if you’re on a tight budget and want a professionally designed website.

Encourage your customers to market for you

It’s possible to encourage your customers to market for you. Recommendations are often a major source of new customers for many businesses. Positive online reviews and social media shares meanwhile are also a form marketing in which your customers do it for you. This type of marketing costs you nothing. The key to encouraging this kind of marketing is to simply make your customers happy – by offering good service and being friendly and welcoming you can help to turn your customers into advocates.  

Prioritise market research

Many companies make the mistake of treating marketing as a trial and error process. However, good marketing should involve doing thorough research first so that you know exactly who your target market are and how to get through to them. For instance, many people launch AdWords campaigns without doing any keyword research, so that their ads come up when people search inappropriate keywords. By using analytics and various keyword tools, you can narrow down the best suited keywords to focus on. Other forms of market research for better understanding your leads could include surveying customers, organising focus groups, keeping tabs on competitors, hiring marketing consultants and reading texts such as books and blogs on marketing.