When you’re deciding how to use your advertising budget, you may have a moment of panic. What do you do with it? Should you spend it all online? What’s the best way to use it effectively?
If you’re concerned about not wasting your advertising budget, check out these tips.
Outline Your Objectives
Every business is different, and your marketing objectives change as your company grows and expands. When you were a new business, you wanted to get the word out. When you’re more established, you want to encourage repeat business.
Outline your goals before making budget decisions. It will help you define what a successful marketing campaign looks like, and it may help you rule out some forms of marketing that you know will be unhelpful.
Research Your Market
A lot of great marketing efforts are wasted because businesses don’t do enough to research the people they want to reach out to. They run ads in the paper and hope they’ll reach the audience or they start a Facebook ad without knowing how to target buyers.
With all marketing, it’s best to start by defining your audience and figuring out where they’re going, looking, shopping and clicking. If your audience isn’t reading the paper every day, then you shouldn’t be spending money on newspaper ads. If your audience is on a certain social media platform like Twitter, then you shouldn’t worry about marketing on Facebook or Pinterest.
Look for Measurable Marketing Strategies
TV ads are big and flashy, but it’s sometimes hard to tell just how effective they really are. Before the internet, TV and radio were great avenues for reaching a mass audience, but now that we have Google, Facebook and other digital marketing tools, we can reach a specific audience and see just how effective our advertising efforts are in real time.
What we have learned is that radio and TV improves the effectiveness of all of your advertising and marketing efforts. However, if you don’t have the money in the budget yet, try digital advertising through Google Adwords or launching a Facebook ad campaign. You’ll see real-time results, and you’ll know if your efforts are actually working. Any system you choose will have some drawbacks, but if you commit yourself to learn about your audience’s digital movements, then you can yield real results.
Contact Us
We at Contractor 20/20 know how important your marketing budget is to your success. Contact us at (607) 770-8933 and get started on a strategy that will speak to your company’s needs.
