If you are the owner of a small business or company, you know that the hardest part is to strike the right balance between saving money and spending it to grow. Investing in a solid marketing strategy is vital to have a chance of finding new prospects, consolidating new leads, and increasing your revenues. In other words, the more you spend, the more you will earn… up to a certain point, at least.
If you spread too thin, in fact, you will end up spending as much as you earn (if not more), so knowing a few ways to save a little bit of hard-earned gold is definitely a necessity. Let’s check out a few solutions and advice to save precious money when running a business.
1. Invest on organic SEO marketing
Organic SEO is one of the oldest and most effective online marketing strategies. Many companies often underestimate this approach because of the relatively low amount of conversions and leads it provides. SEO strategies do not work here and now, and require a lot of patience even to show its first results.
However, a careful SEO planning is one of the most efficient long-term strategies you may ever employ, and it’s by far the cheapest. A good organic placement in Google search results will grant you with a steady flow of relevant traffic aimed at your website. If you take into account that SEO marketing only costs a fraction of any PPC approach, it’s easy to understand how high its ROI is.
On top of that, a well-established SEO plan can provide you with a lot of useful info that can be re-used to tune other marketing strategies finely. Just run a full website audit, and you will learn critical info about your customers such as their demographics, their preferred channels, which contents are the most successful ones, etc.
2. Grow your social networks
Just like SEO, the trick to saving money when you grow your company’s online presence is to invest on the long-term rather than aim for more immediate results. Instead of spending a lot of money to sponsor a single ad, you should tailor it to your specific audience, for example by employing a market segmentation to break down the target to the smallest size possible.
Social media such as Facebook or Instagram are a great place to showcase your content in a quick and simple way, but they can also be used to fill other holes that would require a monetary expense otherwise. For example, Twitter can be used to provide a straightforward answer to a question that a lot of customers keep repeating. Google+ and YouTube can strengthen your organic SEO efforts by creating keyword-optimized videos and post on the respective channels. A Facebook page can be the perfect place to offer customer service, and LinkedIn can be used to connect with other brand influencers and companies.
3. Spend less money for yourself
That’s quite simple to say, right? Well, we all know that although we constantly try to spend less, we always keep spending more as the cost of living keeps increasing. However, there are a lot of new money-saving apps that can go a long way to making you more shopping-savvy or that can show you the latest deal.
Shopkick and SnipSnap will help you find a lot of coupons and offerings, or to redeem the “bonus points” you earn for gift cards or additional discounts. Others like Digit will monitor your monthly expenditures and provide you with interesting insights on how to spend less, or simply passively save a small percentage of your earning. If you’re looking for the best opportunity to buy that printer you so desperately need for your office, these apps are your best friend to save a couple of dollars.
4. Focus on winning strategies only
If you found a perfect formula to attract your customers, don’t change it. As simple as this advice may seem, a lot of business owners seem to miss the importance of the part “if it works, don’t fix it.” Running multiple advertisements on multiple platforms can quickly bleed you out, but if a campaign provided you with good results, just run it again.
You will save a lot of money spent on planning and brainstorming, and you will also earn more experience in that particular platform to make your future campaigns even more efficient. For example, instead of running a new ad, you can employ a referral program to the same ad to further enforce customer engagement.
Wisely planning how to keep your expenses low is mandatory to keep your business running smoothly. However, keep also in mind that being too cheap is not going to help you, either. So try to find a good compromise if you can!