Low cost marketing strategies – is there such a thing?
Low cost marketing strategies – is there such a thing?
After much reflection, I came up with the idea that there are really two variables that make low cost marketing campaigns particularly appealing to small business owners. The variables are ‘time and cost’. I used the slogan ‘time vs. cost’ during my presentation. Because this worked well, I now use this same motto with my own clients as a quick and easy way for evaluating marketing campaigns and ideas. Whilst it isn’t the only consideration, it provides a good foundation to the discussion. Why spend 40 hours on a marketing campaign when there is another idea that may take four hours and deliver the same results. Sounded good to me!
I must admit that my second list of marketing campaign ideas, that were both time and cost effective, was much smaller than the original list. That was not such a bad thing as I encourage all of my clients to only concentrate on one really good marketing campaign at a time, rather than trying to do a lot of things at once. It is important to do this well, analyse the results and then move on to the next idea.
It is also worth mentioning that I highly recommend investing in some form of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to assist in the management of your contacts and campaigns for your business more effectively. For those who read the Consumer Research Report April edition of the Marketing magazine you will remember that 94% of consumers agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, “ I’d like to be able to choose how companies communicate with me in the future”. Any decent CRM system will allow you to do this. If the world of databases is not your skill set, I recommend looking at systems that can start small and grow with your business as required.
Having a good CRM system in place and using it effectively can be the platform for cost and time effective marketing strategies. Three of these strategies are discussed further below.
Email Marketing – target your email marketing to specific relevant customers:
Email marketing is not new and many people would probably now argue that it has been ‘done to death’. However, I believe that targeted email marketing programs are both time and cost effective. I know from my own perspective I have had a recent change of life experience being pregnant with my first child. Prior to this, I was never interested in anything to do with babies or kids and did not seek out this type of information in any way. How things have changed so quickly! In the last week, I have signed up to the Baby Bunting, Coles Baby Club and Huggies online community in an effort to educate myself about life with a newborn baby. When the information from those resources is no longer useful, I will simply unsubscribe.
My strong recommendation with email marketing is that it is very important to know your target audience well and to categorise it as narrowly as possible. Use this classification system to segment your mailing lists (database) and make sure that your email campaigns are only sent out to the relevant groups. There would be n point sending me information about retirement homes when it is not something I am interested in. Also, don’t forget to ask your customers how they want you to communicate with them so you can follow these instructions. Include this question on new customer information forms etc…
Having a very specific and targeted email-marketing program supported by a database that will extract to the people the campaign is relevant to is both time and cost effective. Try it out!
Events – organise an event that can be replicated to different customer bases multiple times:
Being an organiser of events in my own business, I know from experience that they often take up a lot of time and money. What I do think though, is if you have a standard formula for running an event and can multiply that over a number of days/sessions with new people attending each time, then there is scope for an event marketing program to be both time and cost effective.
A personal trainer client of mine recently teamed up with a food coach to run an event in her studio on the subject of healthy autumn food. The next event is a winter class, which has already sold out. So rather than create an entire new event, I suggested running the winter class multiple times over different time slots to try and attract more people. Whilst the first event didn’t prove to be very profitable for this client, the next event in winter is certainly shaping up to do so.
Running events for your target audience is a great way to attract new customers and remind people that you are still in business. In my own case, I picked up two new customers alone from my last event.
An industry expert:
At various stages in your career and business life, you may feel the value in positioning yourself as an expert in your particular field. One way to do that is to write about your subject matter and have it published. There are a number of websites and on-line forums that are constantly seeking new and quality content and once you get started, the momentum does seem to build quite quickly. I would recommend using one article to start with (as your base content) and send it to various websites for publishing. If writing is not your strength, hire a copywriter to do this for you. Try to build a long-term relationship with the person so that they get to know you and your style and write better as your ‘shadow author’.
Through writing articles I have been able to position my business and myself in such a way that it has opened up new and different opportunities. If you are going to use this strategy, my recommendation is that you tell as many people as possible!
There are many more low cost marketing campaigns to discuss, but I am out of space! If you would like any ideas on where to get articles published on the Internet or anything else in this article, drop me a line and I would be happy to share my thoughts with you.
Low cost marketing strategies is there such a thing - To learn more about this author, visit Jo Macdermott's Website.
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When I was putting together the presentation for this event, I started to brainstorm all the time effective marketing campaigns/strategies that I could think of. It didn’t take very long to complete this task and I had a sense that the event was going to come together much easier than I had anticipated. That was until I realised that many of the time effective marketing campaign ideas I had put together were not cost effective options for small business owners. So what was the point, if at the end of the day the businesses I was presenting to didn’t have the budget to do the campaign in the first place? It was at this stage I realised that my original presentation idea needed a bit of re-work.
After much reflection, I came up with the idea that there are really two variables that make low cost marketing campaigns particularly appealing to small business owners. The variables are ‘time and cost’. I used the slogan ‘time vs. cost’ during my presentation. Because this worked well, I now use this same motto with my own clients as a quick and easy way for evaluating marketing campaigns and ideas. Whilst it isn’t the only consideration, it provides a good foundation to the discussion. Why spend 40 hours on a marketing campaign when there is another idea that may take four hours and deliver the same results. Sounded good to me!
I must admit that my second list of marketing campaign ideas, that were both time and cost effective, was much smaller than the original list. That was not such a bad thing as I encourage all of my clients to only concentrate on one really good marketing campaign at a time, rather than trying to do a lot of things at once. It is important to do this well, analyse the results and then move on to the next idea.
It is also worth mentioning that I highly recommend investing in some form of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to assist in the management of your contacts and campaigns for your business more effectively. For those who read the Consumer Research Report April edition of the Marketing magazine you will remember that 94% of consumers agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, “ I’d like to be able to choose how companies communicate with me in the future”. Any decent CRM system will allow you to do this. If the world of databases is not your skill set, I recommend looking at systems that can start small and grow with your business as required.
Having a good CRM system in place and using it effectively can be the platform for cost and time effective marketing strategies. Three of these strategies are discussed further below.
Email Marketing – target your email marketing to specific relevant customers:
Email marketing is not new and many people would probably now argue that it has been ‘done to death’. However, I believe that targeted email marketing programs are both time and cost effective. I know from my own perspective I have had a recent change of life experience being pregnant with my first child. Prior to this, I was never interested in anything to do with babies or kids and did not seek out this type of information in any way. How things have changed so quickly! In the last week, I have signed up to the Baby Bunting, Coles Baby Club and Huggies online community in an effort to educate myself about life with a newborn baby. When the information from those resources is no longer useful, I will simply unsubscribe.
My strong recommendation with email marketing is that it is very important to know your target audience well and to categorise it as narrowly as possible. Use this classification system to segment your mailing lists (database) and make sure that your email campaigns are only sent out to the relevant groups. There would be n point sending me information about retirement homes when it is not something I am interested in. Also, don’t forget to ask your customers how they want you to communicate with them so you can follow these instructions. Include this question on new customer information forms etc…
Having a very specific and targeted email-marketing program supported by a database that will extract to the people the campaign is relevant to is both time and cost effective. Try it out!
Events – organise an event that can be replicated to different customer bases multiple times:
Being an organiser of events in my own business, I know from experience that they often take up a lot of time and money. What I do think though, is if you have a standard formula for running an event and can multiply that over a number of days/sessions with new people attending each time, then there is scope for an event marketing program to be both time and cost effective.
A personal trainer client of mine recently teamed up with a food coach to run an event in her studio on the subject of healthy autumn food. The next event is a winter class, which has already sold out. So rather than create an entire new event, I suggested running the winter class multiple times over different time slots to try and attract more people. Whilst the first event didn’t prove to be very profitable for this client, the next event in winter is certainly shaping up to do so.
Running events for your target audience is a great way to attract new customers and remind people that you are still in business. In my own case, I picked up two new customers alone from my last event.
An industry expert:
At various stages in your career and business life, you may feel the value in positioning yourself as an expert in your particular field. One way to do that is to write about your subject matter and have it published. There are a number of websites and on-line forums that are constantly seeking new and quality content and once you get started, the momentum does seem to build quite quickly. I would recommend using one article to start with (as your base content) and send it to various websites for publishing. If writing is not your strength, hire a copywriter to do this for you. Try to build a long-term relationship with the person so that they get to know you and your style and write better as your ‘shadow author’.
Through writing articles I have been able to position my business and myself in such a way that it has opened up new and different opportunities. If you are going to use this strategy, my recommendation is that you tell as many people as possible!
There are many more low cost marketing campaigns to discuss, but I am out of space! If you would like any ideas on where to get articles published on the Internet or anything else in this article, drop me a line and I would be happy to share my thoughts with you.
Low cost marketing strategies is there such a thing - To learn more about this author, visit Jo Macdermott's Website.
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Joe DagerJoe Dager is President of Business901, a progressive coaching company providing no-nonsense direction in areas such as Lean Six Sigma Marketing and organized referral marketing. What others say: In the past 20 years, Joe and I have collaborated on many difficult issues. Joe’s ability to combine his expertise with “out of the box” thinking is unsurpassed. He has always delivered quickly, cost effectively and with ingenuity. A brilliant mind that is always a pleasure to work with.” - James R. If you want to learn more about Business901, start a conversation with us. We can be found @ Web/Blog: Business901.com Web/Blog: FundingYourNonprofit.com LinkedIn Profile Follow me on Twitter - Visit Joe Dager's Website |
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George LudwigGeorge Ludwig is a recognized authority on sales strategy and peak performance psychology. An international speaker, trainer, and corporate consultant, he helps clients like Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories, Northwestern Mutual, CIGNA, and numerous others improve sales force effectiveness and performance. Though it's George's strategies and processes that help corporations increase productivity and performance, it's his tremendous energy and dynamism that spark the transformation. Again and again, clients remark on his amazing ability to unleash human capacity and inspire men and women to break out of their comfort zones. The result is a whole new type of salesperson. His customized presentations teach achievers to make stunning advances in their lives. From helping salespeople realize cherished dreams to helping corporations exponentially accelerate revenue streams, George Ludwig leaves audiences and individuals empowered, emboldened, and clamoring for more. George is the best-selling author of Power Selling: Seven Strategies for Cracking the Sales Code and Wise Moves: 60 Quick Tips to Improve Your Position in Life & Business. - Visit George Ludwig's Website |
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Kim CastleWith nearly two decades in the advertising and design business, with clients like Domino's Pizza, General Motors, Direct TV, Pedigree, Wolfgang Puck, Higher Octave Music, Hollywood Celebrity Products, Disney, and Paramount, as well as thousands of entrepreneurs around the world define, structure, communicate, and position their business for greater profits, BrandU(R) co-creators Kim Castle and W. Vito Montone discovered that entrepreneurs could experience the same power that big brands command for a fraction of the cost with the world's only process-based results-drive Integral approach to business creation. BrandU(R) is helping entrepreneurs grow with the power of extreme clarity from idea...to brand...to market(TM) and helping one million entrepreneurs become successful and whole so that they can make a difference in the world. Are you one of them? If you want to experience clarity all the way to the bank(TM), get started now at http://www.brandu.com. - Visit Kim Castle's Website |
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John PowerJohn Power, founder of Biltmore Franchise Consulting, has extensive experience developing and marketing franchises and business opportunities. He has been in and around franchising for over twenty years. From 1980 through 1990 he conceptualized, organized, and developed the American Video Association. He grew AVA to 2,000 national members, before selling the company it 1990. It was later merged into another home video marketing company. From 2000 to 2005 he worked as a contract marketing and human resources consultant to several local and national companies. In 2005 Mr. Power began working as a franchise development consultant on a full-time basis. Since that time he has helped more than three dozen companies initiate and develop their franchising program. He notes that there are many companies interested in developing a franchise program, and who need his specialized assistance. Mr. Power is a “hands-on” franchise consultant. He said, “I am the ‘nuts and bolts’ person who tends to the details for my clients.” Mr. Power holds a B.S. degree with a major in Marketing. See: www.biltmorefranchise.com You may contact Mr. Power at: jpower@biltmorefranchise.co - Visit John Power's Website |
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Dave KurlanDave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website |
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Jeff FosterWebBizIdeas.com is a Minneapolis website design company founded to help people start an internet business by providing them with website, business, and internet resources that help foster the growth of successful online businesses and develop innovative Internet business ideas. We specialize in internet consulting & internet marketing. - Visit Jeff Foster's Website |
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Stephanie RobeyStephanie Robey is President and CoFounder of Pivot Positive, LLC - an Internet marketing business focused on helping people start work at home ventures. Previously, she was employed at The Search Agency with over 20 years experience in graphic design and 10 years experience in online marketing. She was responsible for launching the Conversion Path Optimization (CPO) unit where she and her team have conducted hundreds of optimization tests for online companies across multiple verticals. She is a successful entrepreneur having started and sold 2 companies and remains on the board of directors of the third, PhotoSpin.com Stephanie began her career in the direct marketing realm creating and producing direct mail for many of the major cable television companies and directly attributes her understanding of Internet marketing to those early offline experiences. Stephanie is a graduate of San Diego State University with a BFA in Graphic Arts and also holds an Executive MBA from the Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University. Read Steph's Blog Meet Steph and Dave Sign up for our Free 7-Day BootCamp: Self Employed & Rich - Visit Stephanie Robey's Website |
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David AchesonDavid Acheson is the founder of DCJA Consultancy. DCJA Consultancy is a management consultancy business specialising in B2B sales consultancy. They offer bespoke and packaged sales consultancy including Sales Optimisation Review, Interim Sales Management, Sales & Marketing Review, 1:1 Sales & Management Staff Analysis, Management Training, Solution Sales Training, Creation of New Pay Plan, KPI's, run Customer Feedback Campaigns, assist with Recruitment, Coaching, Appraisals and set up Strategic Marketing Campaigns. David spent his early career in accountancy and then moved into sales in 1982, working in Office Equipment, IT, Advertising, Training, Outsourcing and Consultancy. He has held many Senior Positions in SMBs and Global Organisations including Head of Sales Operations & Head of Business Development. His knowledge, skills and great experience of the Sales Industry has led to David making keynote speeches and running educational sessions to key businesses through organisations including The Chamber of Commerce and Business Link. - Visit David Acheson's Website |
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