Investing in your marketing is essential to surviving inflation
With the cost of living rising dramatically over the last 12 months, it’s not surprising many businesses are starting to feel the pinch.
According to a recent survey, 89% of adults have reported a rise in daily costs with 61% now reporting they are spending less on non-essentials than before.
This means that it’s tougher than before for brands to hit their sales targets with the much tougher digital competition.
How we transformed a start-up from zero to a 6 figure business
Why it’s important for brands to invest despite rising marketing costs
It’s important to think of spending on marketing as an investment. It should be measured against the revenue it returns, rather than thinking of it as a standalone cost.
1. You need to make sure that you’re in it to win it. Digital marketing when done correctly brings a great return on investment.
2. Your competitor is doing it. Not investing in marketing means you’re giving them the floor to target potential customers.
3. It promotes company growth. Even huge brands that are household names like Coca-Cola still regularly invest in their marketing.
4. How else will you bring in new customers? Making new customers aware of your products and improving your reach is crucial for the continuation of your business.
There has been a massive shift from businesses focusing solely on traditional marketing (think leaflets, newspaper ads and tv advertising) to utilising digital marketing.
Benefits of digital marketing campaigns
The great thing about digital marketing is that you can accurately track it. Unlike dispatching thousands of leaflets and hoping for the best, with digital you can:
- Take advantage of audience targeting to make sure the right people see your brand.
- Accurately track spending and monitor data
- Optimise digital marketing campaigns using data learned
- Measure return on investments accurately
- Obtain vital data that can help you scale your business
Benefits of using a digital marketing agency
Ways that businesses can be successful despite increasing digital marketing costs
With many businesses now promoting themselves digitally, it can be more difficult to make sure that your brand is noticed.
The saturation in the digital market has meant that many businesses have needed to turn to paid marketing methods to support their organic digital marketing.
This done correctly can generate great brand awareness, encourage customer engagement, and drive website conversions. But it’s very easy to spend lots of money without having much to show for it.
We’ve put together a handy list of tips to help you make the most of your marketing budget.
10 tips to make the most of your marketing spend
1. Don’t give up easily
It can be tempting to give up if you don’t see immediate returns. But it’s important to stay consistent and to make sure your brand is in the competition.
2. Consistently monitor your data
The huge benefit of digital marketing is that you can easily monitor campaign data to see what’s working well and what needs adjustment. Regularly checking your data means that you’re able to jump on to take advantage of peaks or optimise to improve results.
3. Accurately measure your return
Think of digital marketing as an investment. As long as you’re consistently getting good returns on your investments it will allow you to scale.
4. Make sure you have conversion tracking set up
The first step in launching a campaign should be setting up proper conversion tracking set up. Regardless of whether you’re running a Google Ads campaign or email marketing, you need to make sure you’re tracking the valuable actions customers are taking.
5. Optimise and learn
Use the data you collect to improve your marketing campaigns. This helps you grow and scale your business to be more successful.
6. You don’t need to be on every channel
Not every marketing channel will suit every business and that’s ok. Having 2 really great channels where your target customers will find you is better than being on 10 poorly run channels.
7. Resist focusing on vanity metrics
A vanity metric is something that might look great but doesn’t translate to meaningful results for your business. At Copper Bay Digital, we work with our clients to identify metrics which contribute to your business.
8. Rely on partnerships
It can be expensive to have internal staff who can handle all of your marketing needs. It is often much cheaper and puts less strain on your business to work with a digital agency that specialises in digital marketing.
9. Start small and scale up
It’s much safer to start with smaller investments and up your spending when you see great returns.
10. Be efficient – make use of marketing tools
Many businesses are looking to concentrate on marketing automation tools to help streamline their processes and nurture cold leads. This helps keep your employee spending down as the automation tools handle the brunt of the workload.