Working within a small business you may find yourself always trying to do more with less. It's a horrible task, but not impossible. Here are a few tips that can help.
1. Review your current spending on Advertising
Much advertising either annoys the recipient or gets missed completely.
New research by Relevant Insights revealed that only 28% of us watch television adverts. The rest ignore, mute or change channels.
Banner adverts are the most annoying advertising medium according to 73% of us. When asked what print ads they had seen in the last two weeks, 54% of consumers said they had either seen none, or could not remember a single one.
2. Be more pro-active on Linkedin
Join relevant groups (geographical and industry specific), ask questions and answer questions within these groups, position yourself as the expert.
Investigate your connection’s connections, ask for introductions when appropriate.
3. Work with LOCAL Marketing agencies
The Design Business Association's (DBA) survey of its members in 2012, showed the average rate at which direct staff are charged out is £113 per hour in London. In the South West, it’s just £92. That's a 25% saving. The size of a company can also make a difference. Most larger companies will also have a larger support staff to pay, as well as higher overheads. Again the DBA shows companies with more than 20 employees charged on average 22% more per hour, than their smaller rivals.
4. Pay per click
Pay per click can be an effective way to promote your business, products or services….but do you really need to do it EVERY MONTH? Why not try 3 months on/3 months off and then monitor the results. This could save you 50% off your annual PPC budget.
5. Get ideas from all employees
Get everyone, from Abbey on reception, to Keith in accounts, to chip in.
An ideas intranet is cheap and simple to set up. Explore Wazoku's ideas-management portal (www.wazoku.com). Ideas can be generated, discussed, edited and voted on through a web browser.
6. Use free tools
Online tools don't need to cost the earth. There’s a wealth of information on Google Analytics that you can use in place of paid-for web hit measurement tools.
If you’re unable to pay for a clippings service, then Google Alerts or Pickanews.com will help you to keep track of coverage.
Google Insights and Google Trends can give valuable information that may save you commissioning market research.
Use Survey Monkey to create free surveys.
7. Review the effectiveness of your face-to-face networking groups
There are an infinite number of networking groups in our region from your local Chamber of Commerce to BNI, Ladies who latte to 4 Networking……but it’s worth reviewing what exactly do you get out of each network?? Do you go along just for the social element of the meeting, speak to the same 3 or 4 people every month and do very little ‘real’ networking?
Networking groups can be expensive. Look back at the last 6 months’ worth of activity and decide which offers the best/worst value for money. What is the calibre of business people attending? Are the speakers motivating, inspiring and genuinely informative?
8. If something works, stick with it
Too many marketers scrap their old promotions and create new ones because they are bored with their current campaign. That's a waste. You shouldn't create new ads or promotions if your existing ones are still accurate and effective. You should run your ads for as long as your customers read and react to them. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!
9. Partner with others
Look for businesses with complementary services to create co-operative advertising campaigns so that you can pool your resources.
10. Improve the content on your website
If you want your site to rank highly in Google – and you do – you need great content and you need people to share it. Google is (currently) basing your search-engine ranking more on how much your content is shared than on how much your content is linked to.
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