Digital Marketing 101: Marketing first steps while under a budget!
Maria Gabriela Corral
Marketing and Communications | Project Management | Digital Marketing Strategist | Digital Marketing Director | Business Strategist
Business owners and entrepreneurs design their daily schedules and agendas in such a way they get the most out of their 24h by focusing on the most value-generator and profitable activities for their companies. Their schedules include activities like supply chain structure, finding the best providers, building alliances, expanding their networks, and looking for growing sales as much as possible.
Many brands with huge potential are looking to expand their sales, and spend their day-to-day looking for the perfect formula and distribution of their value-generator activities to do so. Still, they “don’t have time” to invest in marketing since it’s not on their priority list. It’s funny because… growing sales is!
Honestly, they cannot be blamed, the old-school Marketing Agencies space has been led for decades by big agencies charging high fees while only focusing on the work they were hired for, without a holistic picture frame on how to make it work as a whole in the long run (basically, looking at the smaller picture of success), or why is X part of the process not driving you the sales that it should. And all of these only if they were able to work with them because they had the budget for meeting the “latest” requirements of production, you could afford hiring the most trendy supermodel and could afford a 3-day stay in Paris for having the perfect setting for that 15sec shot.
The good part is that times have changed, and building awareness of your products is no longer a plus, but a necessity. Well I mean, it has always been among the business’ priorities, but my point here is, the market’s current trends have changed.?Unless you want to follow Kodak’s steps (don't recommend it though, we all know how it ended) you want to be able to keep yourself up-to-date or lead your way to success if you are just starting with Marketing.
Still, I understand how not everyone is ready just yet to take the big jump into tailoring their marketing efforts into what works nowadays. And if you are a recently launched biz that cannot afford to “meet the requirements” of the advertising industry nowadays, then let me tell you that…
Yes, you can, because you can design a marketing blueprint and execute it, without spending tons on it while you let it grow and multiply.
Here are three under-the-budget ways to start preparing your business for ensuring a good arsenal of assets to put into action in a blink of an eye.
???UGC
Having enough materials to advertise is not a matter of spending tons of money on studio photoshoots of your products nor highly-produced designs. That actually may be crucial if you are thinking of advertising on other platforms such as TV or any subway station. When it comes to digital advertising, the rawer the better. People want to connect with people, and the less salesy your creative looks and the more you emphasize the benefits of using the product instead of showing the attributes and different product angles increases the engagement rate.
And the best part of it is that, since it’s created by customers it not only gives you content to use for advertising but also leverages your authority since it is authentic, real and unfiltered. UGCs basically improve your reputation for “free” while increasing the loyalty of your customers and you get yourself to share content on their social media platforms so they help you spread the word and build awareness about your brand.
You can encourage them by sending free products to your most loyal customers in exchange for recording a video or sharing the product on their instagrams or TikTok. You can create giveaways, create specific hashtags for your customers (or potential prospects) to participate in your raffles.
????START A NEWSLETTER
Keep your site visitors up-to-date on any offer, re-stock, promotion, sale, or new release on your website. It even works for sending out teasers and promoting your giveaways and contests.
Newsletters are also great since people have already given you their consent to receive them. And if you are starting to get clients’ emails (or looking to grow your current email list), providing value to them is the best way of getting them!
领英推荐
Whether is through a free sample product to your first 50 subscribers, or adding a time-limited offer for getting that free item, sharing free courses, or handling them a copy of a freebie you are looking to put together that tackles any particular topic or provides any solution to your target audience’s lifestyle, something that gives them a heads up of who you are, and what you do. Bear in mind that this complements pretty well with popups and subscription forms on the website.
Basically, it would be an appetizer for what your main offer is, give them a dessert spoon of taste and make them come back for more
To make the most out of your newsletters you need to also keep in mind to put up a proper audience segmentation. This allows you to create targeted groups of people with similar characteristics and as a result, produce content that resonates with them.
This segmentation is also crucial for a more advanced stage of your business, so you can also segment your audience based on that stage of the funnel they are currently at. So you can set up remarketing campaigns with the already existing information retrieved from the website + newsletter.
???VLOGGING AND MARKETING CONTENT
Vlogging is a visual form of brand promotion. Additionally, you get to incorporate some of your brand personality there. Everything from educational videos to behind-the-scenes footage of your business or operations works fantastically while simultaneously humanizing your brand.
Remember we said no high budget! But when money is not a variable to consider, then sweat and effort is the only way to go, at least when you are starting with marketing at all.
So very briefly, a list of things you need to get done for vlogging includes:
Having vlog assets allow you to also use them as on your Top of the Funnel campaigns, breaking down the structure in a way where you can also create clips from the videos recorded allowing you to have even more content available.
???BONUS TIP??
Sign up for the free trial of the video editing software once you have the final content. This way, you can work intensively and save money
So in the end, the answer is no. No, it is not impossible to conduct marketing under a budget. Making sure that people are aware of your brand and that the ones that tap into your business are actually the right people to be shown your products and content will show results in less than 90 days.
No marketing effort ever starts with tons of budget put on the first set of ads since you must go through the testing phase first. You scale it. You grow your ad spend as you see profitability on your campaigns, and as you could see as well, you needn't spend almost the same as you would spend on ad budget on content to advertise.
If you are under a marketing budget, start putting together the UGC creation, newsletter, Customer’s loyalty program, Giveaways, and Special offers, and Newsletter. So when you are ready to start investing in scaling your arsenal of marketing asses then BOOM! It 's all done…