Marketing is vital for any business. Marketing is the backbone of any company as it helps the marketplace know about it. A company can promote products or services through marketing, create brand awareness, and generate leads. It is thus important to look at ways to reduce marketing costs.
Although marketing is important for any business, it can be expensive, especially for small businesses. In this post, we will discuss some tangible ways to reduce marketing costs without sacrificing the quality of your marketing efforts.
Define your target audience
Even with the best product possible, not everyone will applaud your product, as some may not need it. One of the businesses’ biggest mistakes is trying to appeal to everyone. This approach is costly as you are targeting a broad audience. It is also ineffective as your product will not resonate with some customers’ needs. Instead, defining your target audience can help you tailor your marketing efforts to appeal to them specifically. This way, you can reduce your marketing costs and increase the effectiveness of your campaigns.
For instance, if an agricultural SaaS company does not define its audience and tries to sell the software to everyone, it will waste time and money. It will need to clarify what the audience wants as much as the company may know what pain points they are solving. They may also do a wide outreach, lowering the return on investment. But once it has a buyer persona, it will have a target audience profile that will help it know its target market’s age, location, pain points, triggers, etc. This will help the company tailor its offering to reach the target audience and get its attention.
Targeting helps you to have messaging that resonates with your target audience. This leads to more engagement and results. Clients will only listen to you when you talk in their language. For instance, you will talk to generation Z differently than you would talk to baby boomers. With proper messaging, achieving a high return on investment will be easier.
Targeting helps with personalization. Personalization is whereby you tailor your offer to the buyer’s needs. Personalization will help your target buyers to know that you understand their needs and want to solve them. Personalization comes in many dimensions, not only about the name and location. When you tailor your offer to the buyers’ needs, you will likely get a response. Marketing is all about adjusting to the customer and fulfilling their needs.
BuyerMind, Sulma & Sulma’s product, has been created to help you unlock your buyer’s mind. The AI tool uses data and insights to help you properly define your target market. You will understand the buyer’s pain points, triggers, characteristics, buyer habits, etc. This will help you do proper targeting if you are looking to reduce marketing costs. It will help you have effective marketing efforts through personalization, effective communication, specific targeting, etc. This will help you spend less but have more efficiency.
Use Email Marketing
Email marketing is a cost-effective way to reach your target audience directly. It’s cheap, as there are free email marketing tools to send newsletters, promotions, and other marketing messages to your subscribers. Additionally, you can segment your email list to ensure your messages are relevant to your subscribers’ interests. For example, an online retailer may use email marketing to promote its latest products and offer exclusive discounts to its subscribers. By segmenting its email list based on customers’ past purchases, the retailer can send targeted messages that can convert into sales.
In the current era, we receive thousands of emails per day. Without the right strategy, the email you send a client may fall through the cracks. That is why you need to understand your customers so that you can send emails they resonate with. Emails they resonate with are personalized and address their pain points. Sending the right emails will lead to high open rates, click rates, and replies. For instance, if a client wants to replace their cooker because it has issues and you send them an email with information on what options they can take, and the pros and cons of each option, they are likely to reply.
BuyerMind can help you do effective email marketing. It can help you accurately segment your users according to their stage in the buyer’s journey, needs, pain points, triggers, and buyer behavior. This can help you decide which communication method would work better, e.g., nurturing or sending a case study. BuyerMind will help you craft a message that resonates with them and use the right CTA that prompts action. This will help you save on time and costs as you will have an engaged email campaign that drives results.
Leverage social media
Social media platforms offer a cost-effective way to reach a large audience. Many Generation Z shoppers will likely check out a company on social media before engaging with them. Creating a social media presence is free, and businesses can leverage various social media platforms to promote their products or services. They can also use social media to address customer queries or concerns. Regularly posting content that appeals to your target audience can build a following and increase engagement.
Many SaaS companies face the challenge of low conversion rates such that users drop off after the trial period. Even though the free trials are good as they help a customer have a feel of the product, some users may drop off if they do not see immediate results, and some will not give it much value if they are not paying for it. Here is an example from a SaaS startup,
“We’ve given free trials and have absolutely seen folks drop off on usage when their day-to-day life got busy or results weren’t immediate.” Emily Anastasiades, co-founder at Uptok.
Companies can leverage social media to change the narrative. An example of a company that used this is Hootsuite. Hootsuite is a social media management platform that helps businesses manage their social media accounts. They used social media to build brand awareness and establish themselves as thought leaders in the industry. They also leveraged user-generated content to showcase their product’s capabilities and highlight customer success stories.
Once a customer knows you, in this case through your posts, they are likely to buy from you as you would have built their confidence in you. People like buying from people they know.
BuyerMind can help you understand your target audience better. This will help you position your business on social media to attract the right people. It will also help you use the right messaging that resonates with them. This will help you have better engagement and more inbounds for your business. BuyerMind decodes customers’ minds and matches them with the right proposals.
Content marketing
Content marketing is gold as it guides a potential customer through the different stages in a buyer’s journey. Understanding customers is a must so that you can know what to tailor and for what stage in the journey. For instance in the awareness phase, guides and articles may work better while in the consideration stage case studies would work better.
The current buyers in the market are empowered and want to find information for themselves before they decide to make a purchase. It is crucial to understand your users to know what type and format of content will suit their needs. For instance generation Z users will prefer video content over written content. Many buyers now lean more towards short-form content for their needs. It is a must for a company to adapt to the needs of the market.
By understanding customers, you will be able to offer personalised content that is engaging and will trigger an action.
Hubspot leveraged content marketing to drive up its sales by offering useful and valuable content. It has been on the number one page of Google on marketing-related topics. The secret towards Hubspot’s success is studying users and adapting to their needs.
BuyerMind can reveal the pain points and triggers of your customers, which can help you craft content that will address that. For example if a customer has a pain point of ineffective communication with customers and is looking for pricing as a trigger, we can help you capture that and adapt to their needs. BuyerMind can also segment your buyers so that you know what content to give to what people. Through data and insights, you can know the trending topics and where your buyers are searching for information. This can help you adapt to beat competition. Through the AI tool, you can get real-time insights on your buyers changing needs and adjust accordingly helping you remain relevant.
Strategic partnerships
Collaborating with other businesses can be a cost-effective way to increase your reach. You can partner with other companies to create joint marketing campaigns, cross-promote each other’s products or services, or even host events together. You can leverage each other’s audiences and reach new potential customers by doing so. For example, a hair salon may partner with a local beauty supply store to discount haircuts to customers who purchase products from the store. This way, the salon can attract new customers interested in beauty products, and the store can attract new customers interested in haircuts.
Strategic partnerships with influencers can help increase the business’s brand awareness and drive its sales. Influencers can endorse the product to their followers, which may lead to more outreach. Many buyers love buying products recommended or approved by people they trust. That is why some websites, such as Yelp, are popular. Good reviews or referrals magically drive up sales. With influencers, you will have to give them a product for free, a coupon, or pay them, depending on their level. In the current age, some sites and apps can connect you to influencers, such as Intellifluence.
For instance, to launch a new beauty product, you can go to Intellifluence and look for the right influencer in the beauty product niche. Once you agree on the terms, you can then get into a partnership such that they try your product on and endorse it on Tiktok or Instagram. This will make many other people curious also to try the product.
Another approach to a strategic partnership is being a member of a relevant body. E.g., if you offer marketing services, be a member of the marketing body in your region. This will give you more credibility and exposure. Through membership, you can participate in the different activities that the body organizes. You can get credibility as some buyers want to verify you belong to a particular body for credibility. This will help you grow cost-effectively.
BuyerMind, through its AI abilities, can help you identify your competitors and companies that complement you. This can help you choose the right partner to work with and know competitors or industry best practices. This can help you choose the right path that will give you results. When you have entered into a partnership, you can quickly know what’s working and what is not, thanks to the data insights dashboard. This will help you quickly adjust your strategy to something that works.
Conclusion
There are plenty of other ways to attain cost-effective marketing. The most important tip is to keep testing to know what is working and what is not. When you test, you can know iterations to make to get results. Through BuyerMind, you can get easy access to real-time data and insights that can help you see if you are on the right path and what adjustments you can make. BuyerMind decodes customers’ minds and matches them with the right proposals. In marketing, do not be afraid to try!
