How to make some cost savings with your marketing budget

6 factors to consider when calculating savings to your marketing costs

Calculating the cost of marketing

In a world where prices seem to be escalating quickly, you might be looking at all your marketing budget costs and wondering where you can trim a few pounds?   Marketing is often the first budget to be cut. Before we give you some cost-saving pointers, let’s consider some wise words from Henry Ford.

A man who stops marketing to save money is like a man who stops a clock to save time.”

HENRY FORD

Good marketing is about consistency and often results that will only become evident in the long-term.   Tightening the purse strings will not generate the growth in sales you want to achieve.   So be picky about the campaigns you run to reflect your brand and that will deliver the results.

So where do you start saving costs on your marketing budget?  Here are six pointers to help you gain control:

  1. RESULTS Check your social insights, email reports, Google Analytics and other metrics to understand what works well for you.   Break this down into new business and repeat at business to appreciate the value these deliver and guide you on where you need to look next.  For example, you may double your efforts with your highly targetted email marketing or social ads that work harder. Crearing fewer campaigns to the cold/warm leads that take longer to generate the sales. Some elements, such as printed marketing materials, will not offer statistics, but their value may still be intrinsic to your business. 
  2. RETHINK your objectives and how best to achieve these. Assess your target audience, and how best to approach them to get your messaging just right.  
  3. Make the most of FREE RESOURCES available to make your life easier.  Some of our top tools have a free version available such as Canva, Trello and MailChimp, as well as Creator Studio to schedule those social posts.   The paid-for versions may have more bells and whistles, but let’s not get distracted with more gadgets and keep things straightforward. 
  4. TIME IS MONEY so don’t fall into the trap that your time is free. You may well think that you are more than capable to do a task, but your time might be more productive and profitable on other business activities.  Leave it to the experts.
  5. WORK CLOSELY WITH OTHERS to make your money work harder.   Personally, we don’t swap suppliers to save a few pennies, as we appreciate the service we receive and want to support fellow small businesses. That doesn’t stop you from using their expertise for cost savings. For example, if you are looking to print something, then ask them for alternative materials.  A word of caution here to not scrimp on quality though. Are there cost savings on quantities you can benefit from?
  6. GET CREATIVE some of the best and simplest ideas don’t cost the earth.  Bringing something new, or taking a new approach, can have a greater impact on sales than keeping everything the same.  

Spending money in the right places to work harder for your business is the key here.  Seeing the results will reassure you that your marketing budget is well spent. Furthermore, consistent strategic marketing of your products and services, with a cohesive approach across your channels, will drive the results and establish bigger marketing budgets for the future.  

Need some help assessing your marketing? Get in touch about our marketing audit where we can identify these elements and make suggestions for you to move forward.