Same Marketing Budget, but More Sales
Marketing Budgets have been handed down for the next financial year and you didn’t get the increased marketing budget that you were hoping for (or needing). Instead you’ve been asked to increase your sales with the same budget as last year, a budget that you barely scraped by with.
Right now you are probably thinking ‘How can I pull a rabbit out of a hat?’, but that is exactly what you will need to do with your marketing. Becoming skilled and being able to leverage everything that you possibly can (marketing activity wise) with everything that you already have (the same marketing budget for) is going to be your core focus.
If this is what you are facing then it is vitally important to take complete stock of every single marketing activity, advertising and social media channel that formed part of your marketing mix, and review them. Conducting a forensic-like audit on the activities that yielded results vs those that did not. This will show the difference of how much further your sales can increase from the same marketing activity.
As a rule of thumb, stick with doing only 3 different types of marketing activities that cover both online (web, social media) and offline (print, advertising, direct mail) branded activities overall. Your brand will gain a far better result over an extended period of time (through a compounding effect) by doing only 3 activities, consistently and with varying frequency targeted to your target audience.
Here are four suggestions to leverage more sales using these low cost to market activities that you can implement today, with a little time and even less budget:
- 1. Use a social media channel (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn) and create a competition that your users or target audience can participate in to win, it is a very quick way to get acquainted with your target audience and engage them in something fun they can do, it will add to their experience of your brand
- 2. Find a past advertisement that worked really well and create additional copies (either through short run digital printing or in-house) and use this as a mail out to send to customers, you could include a short cover letter reminding your customers of your product or service, and even use it as a reason to follow up and call
- 3. Sign-up for any free online directories or industry groups that are looking for your product or service, many of these directories can open up your target audience to an entirely new network not previously considered that will expose your brand,
- 4. Consider holding a low cost event at your premises, either for afternoon tea, breakfast or after hours and keep it casual, ask a handful of prospects, clients and staff to participate and initiate a discussion about your product or service, asking the attendees to bring along with them ‘ideas’ on how you can improve your product, service or marketing to increase sales!
All of these marketing activities have proven themselves to be successful regardless of the size of the business, marketing budget or industry. They only require a little bit of time and even less dollars to execute. Each of these marketing activities thrown into your marketing mix will help you to increase sales and may even lead to a deeper engagement with your target audience.
If you are still not sure where to start then Stella Design can help you develop a communication strategy that fits into your marketing efforts to achieve the designed sales.