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Photo by Christina Morillo
An extensive marketing plan and strategy can be expensive. Reports suggest that US businesses spend around 108% of their revenue on marketing, while experts recommend a figure of 5 to 10% for improved results. In real figures, WebFX determines that the typical small business will invest from $50 to $6,000 monthly on marketing.
Finding ways to make your budget work can be a source of relief when striving to keep your spending at the lower end of the scale. These tips are designed to provide that reassurance, offering practical solutions for cost-effective marketing.
Use AI
Copywriters, artists, and photographers can be expensive. However, embracing AI for content generation can empower your business to create compelling marketing materials, particularly for mobile campaigns or social media. This confidence in your ability to produce quality content can be a game-changer for your marketing strategy.
AI tools like Lucidpic can help you create graphics, boost images of yourself or your employees, and be an integral part of your marketing campaign for a fraction of the cost of hiring experts to complete the same work. You can even use ChatGPT to help you create captions, articles, etc.
Use Free Tools
Discovering marketing tools that offer free trials or basic plans can be a rewarding experience. These resources can help you create and schedule marketing content without breaking the bank. Even if you’re just starting, finding these free options can be a testament to your resourcefulness. For instance, Buffer’s free plan forever, with its limited options, is a great way to get started. Mailchimp’s free plans for email marketing and Google Analytics’ free insights can also help you create a more impactful marketing campaign.
Referral Marketing
Referral marketing is where your current customers recommend you to other people. Genuine word-of-mouth marketing is extremely valuable, and you can build on this by offering incentives for people to spread the word about you and what you do. Typically, this is more of a slow-burning option and can take a while. But if you consistently deliver by bringing high-quality goods or services, offering kickbacks to customers for sending others your way can be the perfect low-cost option for you to build your audience.
UGC
UGC is user-generated content, and to encourage this, you need to create products or deliver services that make people want to share on their social media channels. They will be genuine customers who have made a purchase and want to show off what they bought from you or what they think.
By encouraging all customers to share their thoughts, feelings, images, unboxing videos, etc, you can get them to use specific hashtags or tag your social media accounts for you to then reshare with permission for use on your page. This cuts the cost for you of creating the content, as the customer does it for you. And you have already made a sale. Plus, more people are likely to buy from genuine customers than influencers, making it a win-win all around.
