As a business owner or marketing manager, you understand the importance of marketing and the impact it can have on your business’s success. A successful marketing campaign can help you reach new customers, increase sales, and boost brand recognition.
Unfortunately, a cost-of-living crunch means that it’s more difficult to get your customers to part with their cash, or you haven’t been given quite as much of a corporate budget as you’d expected. Added to this, energy and other soaring costs are squeezing many businesses, and quite often the first victim of a cost-saving exercise is the marketing budget.
It can seem counterproductive though – after all, the marketing is what generates the revenue. As a general rule of marketing, you should allocate 5% of your annual turnover to marketing. This is as true as it is for large brands as it is for small businesses, and many small business owners don’t have the budget to invest in expensive advertising campaigns. However, there are still ways to get the most out of your marketing budget. In this blog, we will discuss some of the cost-effective strategies available, for maximizing your marketing spend.
Cost-Effective Marketing Strategies
When it comes to marketing, one of the most important things to consider is how to get the most bang for your buck. The key to cost-effective marketing is to focus on strategies that provide the highest ROI (return on investment) or ROAS (Return on Ad Spend). This means focusing on strategies that generate leads, convert leads into customers, and increase customer loyalty.
One of the best ways to do this is to have a clear idea of what your goals are and what your budget is. This will help you plan and prioritize your marketing efforts effectively. For a business that’s looking to squeeze every pound out of an opportunity, it may not be the best time to be bold in wild experimentation. Know every step of your marketing plan and what it is intended to achieve.
It’s also important to track your progress, so you can measure the success of your campaigns and adjust your strategies accordingly. If something isn’t working, then act.
Create a Marketing Budget Planner
The first step in maximizing your marketing budget is to create a budget plan. A budget plan will help you determine how much money you can allocate to each marketing channel and what types of campaigns you should focus on. It will also help you prioritize your marketing efforts and track your progress.
A budget plan should include a detailed breakdown of your budget, including how much you plan to spend on each channel, what type of campaigns you plan to run, and how much you can allocate to each campaign. This will help you stay on track and prevent you from overspending.
You should note that quite often, the strategies that cost the least are the ones that take the longest to see any significant results. For example, paid ads on the likes of Google might see you appear much more visible on the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page), but you will pay highly for that benefit. Working on a solid Search Engine Optimisation strategy, with high quality, optimised photography, and text content might cost far less in terms of direct spending, but the benefits are more drawn out and ultimately long term. If you stop spending on paid advertising, then your visibility vanishes.
Having optimised product photography and video teamed with high-quality product descriptions are a lower-cost, more long-term effective solution. A great place to start is with a creative strategy session, where you can identify who the content is for and what you could create to speak directly to that audience.
Investing in Quality Commercial Photography and Videography
Investing in quality lifestyle or product photos and video is one of the most cost-effective ways to maximize your marketing budget. High-quality images and videos will absolutely help you create a more professional and engaging presence on your website and social media channels. Quality commercial photography also helps you stand out from the competition and communicate your brand’s message or benefits more effectively.
When investing in photography, it’s important to focus on quality over quantity. Investing in a few high-quality photos and videos captured by a professional company is more effective than investing in a large number of low-quality images created on a smartphone. Ideally, you want quality and quantity, so choosing an experienced professional and experienced content creator is key.
A professional photographer will ensure they use suitable lighting, whether it’s in their photography studio or on location to transform your images. They will work with you and the business to ensure all of the images are on-brand and you gain a wide variety to ensure value for money. A professional photographer will also use the best possible equipment to capture the visuals, and they should have lots of ideas on what you could create along with access to CGI / Creative Retouching techniques that elevate your images from plain photographs to inspiring, exciting visuals that appeal to your target audience.
Leveraging Your Products
Leveraging your products is another great way to maximize your marketing budget. If you have a product or service that is popular among your customers, then use it to create more effective campaigns to drive increased traffic to your sales channels, where visitors may be inspired to explore your other products, and ultimately purchase more than they intended.
You can also use your products to drive User Generated Content such as product reviews or even through working alongside micro-influencers to promote your goods to their captive audience. Influencers don’t have to be a huge cost to your business; micro-influencers (social media personalities with 5,000 – 100,000 followers) will often accept some free product in exchange for UGC photography or a paid partnership post to their audience, which is typically more engaged and relevant than that of a larger, more demanding personality. This type of content can be used to engage your target audience and increase brand awareness, which in turn will help you generate leads and increase your sales.
Establishing Partnerships with Other Businesses
Establishing partnerships with other businesses is a great way to maximize your marketing budget. By partnering with other businesses, you can access a wider audience and gain access to resources that you may not have access to on your own.
Partnerships can take many forms, such as co-promotions, joint ventures, and affiliate programs. These partnerships can help you reach a wider audience and gain more exposure for your brand. They can also help you generate leads and increase sales.
Whether you’re looking at refreshing your product image range, or need some fresh, optimised visual content for your brand’s social media platforms, get in touch to have a chat with the team so that we can understand your vision and objectives, and let us elevate your products to the next level.
Here at Picture Perfect Photography, we work alongside some amazing names that can help us to deliver a one-stop shop in the work we do. Our specialism is undoubtedly the highest quality product photography, but alongside brands such as Big Sky Creative, SF Retouch, Danny Barnett Food Styling and Jen Hammonds, we can offer additional valuable services to our clients. These services include video production, social media management, and creative retouching.
Further to this, working with a single operation that offers multiple services can absolutely enable you to manage your budget and your marketing plan much more effectively.
Analysing Results and Adjusting Strategies
The final step in maximizing your marketing budget is to analyse the results of your strategies vs your objectives, and adjust your activity accordingly. By tracking your progress, you can determine which strategies are working and which ones are not. It’s also important to track your progress over time. This will help you identify trends that help you with reactive marketing, as well as predicting seasonal peaks and troughs that will shape your future marketing effort.
Whether you have a small or large budget, having the ability to switch your strategies on a sixpence can help you create effective campaigns and reach a relevant audience. By focusing on cost-effective strategies, such as optimised websites, or wonderfully reusable professional product photography, you can ensure that you are getting the most out of your marketing budget.
Picture Perfect Photography is a professional photography studio in the heart of Yorkshire. We work alongside brands of any size and from industry to capture spectacular product photography that can be used in a variety of ways, from website product pages and brochure images to print ads, and social media content.
We will work with you to create a shoot session plan ahead of time and can project manage your content creation and posting end to end so that we can provide you with an efficient service, effectively giving you the maximum possible value for your outlay. We are always happy to welcome brand and marketing managers on site with their products to work together to ensure the content we capture is as envisioned and not a minute of creative time is wasted. We are also absolutely happy to take delivery of a batch of products and a brief, and use our many years of experience to get on with it and deliver professional images, which can save you time and money. You even have the option of remote and live viewing of your shoot while its happening so we can avoid any re shoots.
Why not save even more money for your business by taking advantage of our great value block booking or subscription package deals? They offer so much more value for money by including additional benefits such as express delivery, short product videos, and discounts on optional extras.
