Never take marketing as expenditure. In fact, it is great investment opportunities that can help your company grow in a longer run. When I started out my first Internet business I wasted a lot of money on online marketing. Initially, my ROI was almost zero and I failed to break even in first few years.
However, with some experience, I was able to change my strategy and reorient my entire online marketing campaign. After some time I was earning more than a dollar in the benefit for every dollar I spent. Over the years of experience, I learned 7 important lessons to make best out of an online marketing budget.
Let’s discuss the helpful ways to maximize your online marketing budget.
Recruitment for Online Marketing
Over the years promoting my business online I’ve found out that hiring fewer experts is more efficient than hiring an army of amateurs. When I started out my online publishing company I went on hiring a lot of inexperienced newbies thinking they will cost me less in remuneration.
However, over a period of time, I realized hiring novice professionals comes at a great cost. You may have to pay less in salary and perks but overall amateurs are a drag on your company because they really don’t help grow it.
After realizing this fact I fired all inexperienced employees and hired just a few professionals who were experts in their domain. My experience says you will incur more cost on hiring hordes of novice employees for a lower remuneration than hiring fewer experts for a higher pay.
Narrow Down Your Target Audience
It really doesn’t matter how great you write and how often you write if you are talking to wrong people. You can’t teach cooking to an audience who is interested in guns. Whether you are generating revenue from Contextual ads or hardcore selling, targeted audience will help you in boosting your revenues fourfold.
Always allocate a sum of money from your online marketing budget to find out your target audience. Knowledge of exact demographics of your website’s visitors will allow you to create content catering their requirements. Today, big companies are spending millions of dollars in R&D for identifying the exact target audience. You can do the same on a very low budget.
Narrowing down your target audience pays you a very high dividend. There isn’t anything new about it.
Take Charge of All SEO Efforts
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has become the backbone of online marketing. Today SEO is consuming 90% of an online marketing budget.
Everyone wants to rank first on the first page of Google search result. Hence clients are willing to pay any amount to an SEO company promising to do so.
This has allowed mushrooming of thousands of SEO companies all over the Internet. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry is swearing to be an SEO expert. Initially, I had no knowledge of SEO and was tempted to seek service from such SEO companies. In fact, I paid thousands of dollars not one but to dozens of SEO companies.
However, these so-called experts were good for nothing. I never got the desired results. So I decided to learn SEO course myself and after few years I was able to manage SEO for my own website. With simple tricks I was able to rank my website high on Google search page for so many different keywords. To cut the story short, I recommend you to invest some time in learning SEO. You will end up saving a lot of money that otherwise you would’ve wasted paying to these so-called SEO gurus.
Spend More on Monetizing and Marketing Your Website’s Content
Instead of spending more on SEO you can divert some funds spend on content marketing. I’ve seen business owners neglecting content marketing because they are completely engrossed in SEO. However, I did exactly opposite and the results were very encouraging. I hired few experts who can monetize content on the website. We added value to it by incorporating infographics, videos, and relevant images into each article of the website. My ROI was much better compared to what I spent on SEO. So don’t ignore to monetize and market your website’s content.
Merge all Your Social Media Campaigns into One
I would say at times social media is bit overrated. I know many of you wouldn’t agree with me but this is my opinion and I can back it up with some evidence. Initially, I wasted time and money promoting my new website through social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram etc.
Although after few weeks my website started receiving traffic from Facebook and YouTube, but it was no use. The audience that we were getting wasn’t able to relate to the topic of the website. This is one of the major drawbacks of social media campaigns that most of the time you get irrelevant and low-quality traffic. But if you want to run a social media campaign then merge all of them into one. That can help you save a lot of money and time.
Research and Experimentation before Scaling Up
Don’t scale up before making an experimental strategy. First, run the trail experiment and if it is successful in giving at least twofold ROI then scale it up. Actually, I learned this very hard way. After squandering so much money I finally learned to ditch a strategy that isn’t working.
It really doesn’t matter whether it is running a social media campaign or email marketing. If it is not working then dump it and device a new strategy. For devising a new strategy you need to experiment with different campaigns. Without testing strategies don’t scale it up, otherwise, you will lose a lot of money.
Consulting a Right Internet Marketing Company
There isn’t anything wrong in accepting help from professional Internet marketing companies. If you’re finding it really hard to generate traffic and monetize your website then consult an online marketing company with a great track record. They can help you to get started and build your entire online campaign from scratch.
In Conclusion
Above mentioned were the 7 great ways to maximize your online marketing budget that can save you a bunch of good money. Besides, computer bots can also heavily affects your budget in online ads, while using the fraud detection services can help you reduce their effects. You necessarily don’t have to agree with all of them. Though, by planning properly about your budget, one must strategize it well in an effective manner.
Article by Lisa Parker
Bio: Lisa Parker is a Freelance writer. Her passion is to write blogs on entrepreneurship, business trends, business management, and business leadership, lifestyle, relationship, career, and education. And many more.