How To Reduce Your Marketing Budget And Not Lose Quality Leads

One of the first things companies look to do over the summer or slow months is to reduce their marketing budget. Sales will be down regardless of your efforts to keep them up, so the only solution is to cut back on what you are spending including employee hours, marketing and so forth. This is standard for a lot of businesses but there’s always a trick to reducing costs while still getting quality. For example, if you reduce the hours your employees are working, you can still make sure that your customers get great service by developing a system that keeps customer service at a high level and ensure the works getting done.

So, how do you do this for marketing and still get leads coming in? While everyone business is different as far as generating sales, there are a few things everyone should do:

• Focus on organic content and presence: Where are you ranked on Google? Do you post to Facebook every day and have followers? SEO, social media marketing and business listings are very low-cost and can help generate organic leads even in down months. It’s also smart to keep them going during the slower months because this is a time when your competitors are pausing their campaigns and you can grab top spots from them much faster.
• Identify cost-effective ways to stay in touch with followers: Facebook and social media sites are great for keeping followers updated on your new promotions. However, what happens if past customers haven’t followed you on social media? One of the things you can consider is sending them emails throughout the summer. If you have your own database, or if you need to use an opted-in one, you can reach consumers throughout the summer for pennies on the dollar of what other services cost when you utilize email marketing.
• Lower your cost per click: If you usually see ads from running campaigns on Google AdWords, then it’s also recommended that you try lowering the cost per click or budget on that rather than completely stopping. The reason is because your competitors may stop and if that’s the case, you can still get top page clicks for pennies on the dollar of what you spend during season. Even better, you can still grab new clients and information that will benefit you in the busy months because you already have a relationship established with them.

The slow months are not a time to worry about sales slowing down. Instead, they are a time to look at opportunities to gain digital real estate on the competition and set yourself up for greater success. If you use this time wisely, you can still stay under budget but give yourself the chance of finishing the year strong.