ARE YOU WASTING MONEY ON MARKETING?
ARE YOU WASTING MONEY ON MARKETING?
When planning your marketing budget, it’s important to know how to allocate your spend to ensure you’re not wasting any money. Here are a few tips, tricks and marketing priorities for maximising your investment.
1. WORK OUT WHAT IT IS YOU WANT TO ACHIEVE.
Maybe your focus is attracting new clients or maintaining relationships with existing clientele. Or perhaps you need to generate more leads or foot traffic. The more detailed and specific you can be about what you want to achieve, the easier it is to build a plan to help you achieve your goal. Think about your target audience, your customers’ pain points and how you can solve their pain.
2. WRITE DOWN WHAT YOU NEED TO DO TO ACHIEVE YOUR SALES GOALS.
Once you have identified and articulated your marketing problem, you can begin to solve it. It is crucial your consumer touchpoints (shopfront, sign, advertising, marketing collateral, website, tender documents, LinkedIn profile etc) are consistent, relevant and show who you are and what you do.
3. WORK OUT HOW MUCH IT IS GOING TO COST.
You need to get quotes, ask questions and find out the best way to do things. Once you see how much it is going to cost, you then compare this investment with the return you are hoping to achieve and see if this is something you are comfortable with. This approach is very different to simply assigning a percentage of turnover to marketing.
4. MEASURE YOUR RESULTS.
Ensure you measure your promotions and campaigns. Marketing should be viewed as an investment you make in your business. And, as with all investments, you need to see a return. However, be sensible in your approach. As with all investments, it is not reasonable to expect to see immediate growth – especially if there is a lengthy sales cycle.
5. AVOID WAYS TO WASTE MONEY.
Avoid only working on one thing from a plan. To pull a plan apart and only run one specific individual component will give you a false reading on the effectiveness of the overall campaign and can also significantly weaken your expected reach and frequency.
Avoid brand fatigue. This is when business owners or staff who see their brand everyday start to think it is getting tired and boring and needs a freshen-up. Remember, your customers don’t see your brand every day. There can be a lot of reassurance for someone looking at a trusted brand – one they recognise. That said, there are a number of legitimate times that brands can and should be updated, particularly when it comes to issues around market positioning.
Avoid inconsistency of brand. It is really important that each consumer touchpoint is consistent from a brand perspective. That means using the same colours, the same logos, the same brand voice in all of your communications. The repetition of your brand in the market place is what helps customers become more aware of you and your product and it is that familiarity that helps them feel more comfortable buying from you.
6. BE STRATEGIC, KNOW YOUR LIMITATIONS AND INVEST IN PROFESSIONAL SERVICES.
If you don’t have the skills or the time to create a professional and polished brand for your business, then you should engage the services of a professional marketing and design company, just as you would engage a lawyer to help with legal matters or an accountant to help with your tax.
7. PUT YOURSELF IN YOUR CUSTOMERS’ SHOES AND BE DELIBERATE AND CONSISTENT.
Conduct a mini audit of all the ways customers come into contact with your brand. Be objective and look at whether they would be seeing a consistent brand. And finally, be deliberate and consistent in all that you do. Stay focused and don’t become distracted. Set yourself monthly targets, constantly check your progress and stay accountable.
Following these steps will help you to be considered and methodical in you marketing approach and help you to avoid wasting money on marketing.
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