How to Grow Marketing Efforts Without Growing Costs

Effective marketing campaigns can have a massive impact on driving growth and attracting new customers for a small-to-medium-sized business. This is something most business leaders understand, but they’re also acutely aware that great marketing tends to carry a price tag. Limited budgets hinder an organization’s ability to explore expansive marketing strategies, but it is possible to scale up without your costs ballooning. Keep reading to learn more.

Automate, optimize and personalize

Making truly effective use of customer data can save a bundle by making your ad targeting more precise and your messaging more relevant. The old “spray and pray” approach is a wasteful way to spend an ad budget, and it’s unnecessary, considering how targeted your ads can be.

Marketing automation software like a CRM enables personalization at scale that fosters a deeper customer relationship, improves conversion rates, boosts retention and increases lifetime customer value. In addition to being able to reach more prospects with more relevant messaging, consider the fact that acquiring a new customer is, on average, five times more expensive than retaining an existing one.

It’s no secret that personalization gets results, and a report by McKinsey found that organizations that excel at it achieved revenue growth at a much higher rate than their peers, and the deeper the level of personalization, the better.

Making the most of marketing automation technology to personalize the customer experience and fine-tuning your paid advertising campaigns to reach precisely the right audience is all about data. To be able to extract its full value, you’ll need the right tools and skills, but the returns will be on-going.

Invest in your content

Content marketing is a cost-effective marketing avenue for a business of any size to pursue. Although it can take time to generate a return on investment, one in five marketers consider it to be highly effective, research has found.

Content marketing gives your brand an opportunity to earn trust by demonstrating expertise and thought leadership. By creating high-quality blog posts, videos, infographics, and other content, you can also add value for customers by answering their questions and providing the information they’re looking for. It’s a good way to boost SEO and improve conversion rates, and it offers tangible long-term brand-building benefits.

Encourage customer referrals

There are numerous ways to unlock the value of your satisfied past customers, and they’re worth pursuing, given that referrals are considered by many to be the most valuable form of marketing. First-hand information from other customers is considered more credible than a standard marketing message, meaning reviews and testimonials should feature prominently on your website and social pages. In addition, consider your options for incentivising customer referrals, perhaps with a referral discount or similar reward.

Word of mouth remains one of the most powerful marketing forces out there and certainly one of the most cost-effective. Once it gets going, an online referrals campaign can rake in high-quality leads without any real expenditure on your part.

Collaborate with a complementary business

Forming a partnership with another business that offers products or services that complement yours can be a great way to expand your brand. Through cross-promotion, you can leverage the reach of another business, access new target markets and spread your brand’s message without spending a fortune to amplify it. Consider co-hosting events, jointly created content, or exclusive bundled offers.

Augment your capabilities

To get an in-house team with the necessary skills set up with the infrastructure and software they require to deliver every aspect of a complete marketing solution, a considerable investment is required, and the ongoing costs would be high. The Marketing as a Service (MaaS) model is a far more cost-effective alternative, allowing businesses to access additional skills, tools and capacity as they require it while avoiding exorbitant overhead costs.

The MaaS model affords flexibility without long-term commitments, especially with the option of month-to-month pricing. As a full-stack agency, CODESM can also ensure that there are no gaps in your marketing strategy. What do you stand to gain with CODESM to support your marketing? Come and see for yourself.