From slick videos guaranteeing so-called ‘viral’ results to promotion campaigns carefully plotted out through social media influencers, some digital marketing strategies can cost an arm and a leg. If you are an upcoming brand looking to make work the online marketing system, a small budget can seem like a huge constraint.
But marketing online isn’t limited to those with abundant expense accounts, there are plenty of tools and resources available that can help small organisations carve out a space for themselves in the digital space through smart and effective campaigning.
So what amount do you spend, and how do you spend it on?
- How much to spend on digital marketing?
- What amount should go to every strategy – social, email, SEM, and so forth?
- What are the tools you need, and the amount they cost? Are free tools available?
- What are the other expenses?
Let’s have a look at the best resources for digital marketing on a budget.
Engage Through Email Marketing
Emails are one of the easiest ways to reach your customer and spread the word about your product or service. A well-crafted email can educate and expedite the transition between a potential customer and a loyal one. To do it, you need to craft communication that is personalised but discreet. Sure, your click-through engagement rates at best will be in the range of 2-3%, but this is offset by the minimal expense email marketing puts on your marketing budget. Platforms such as MailChimp, Sparkpost and MailGun are great for getting started, allowing you to send thousands of emails for free every month, with features including templates and tools to track engagement.
Analyse Your Previous Efforts On Digital Marketing
It is important to analyse your previous efforts and how did you spend your budget last? What went wrong last time. Once this data is captured, it will help you allocate the budget to the projects/strategies that went well in your previous efforts. Also, ensure to keep some budget aside experiment with new strategies.
Ensure Spotless Content
Whether you are sending out a catchy email or writing long-form content in the form of blogs of articles, your spelling and grammar need to be impeccable. Use Grammarly to ensure your content is error-free and in the right voice. There’s a free version that’ll help you with all your basic grammar needs, spelling and more. You can choose to upgrade to the paid version too for more in-depth corrections.
Get SEO Right
In the galaxy that is the internet, your tiny star needs to shine bright in order to be noticed by customers. In digital marketing terms this simply means that your brand needs to show up within the first few contenders among your competition when the relevant product/service you offer is searched for. By following certain Search Engine Optimization (SEO) practices throughout your content, you can help your brand’s content rank above your competitors. One of the most important aspects of SEO is picking the right keywords to match the searches most relevant to your content. Tools such as Google Adwords Keyword Planner and Keywords Everywhere will suggest relevant keywords along with the average monthly search volume. Keywords Everywhere even gives you the cost per click data for multiple websites.
Use Social Media
Gaining traction through social media can be tricky without a generous ad budget. You need to positively engage your customer base in order to increase your popularity and social shares. To do this, your posts need to be worth your product users’ time. Gamification through discounts, promo codes and contests is a useful way to motivate your customer base to click and share.
Make Visuals Your Strong Suit
Attention spans on the internet are hardly reliable and paragraphs of text aren’t going to cut it for the majority of audiences. Presenting your information in an easy-to-absorb format with attractive, graspable visuals is imperative to getting your point across and gaining some brand recollection. Infographics may also help you gain organic backlinks if your quality is good and worth linking to. There are plenty of free tools online with useful templates that help you make infographics easily without the expense of hiring a designer. Check out Canva for its easy-to-use, drag and drop infographic maker, or Piktochart.
Use Google Analytics, Search Console and free tools provided By Google Of Course
The most commonly used tool to track your website traffic, you are probably already well-versed with Google Analytics and the benefits its data provides. From keeping track of traffic sources and keywords that lead users to your pages to tracking bounce rate and social media engagement, this is a set of free tools every digital marketer needs to be adept in using.
Digital marketing on a budget is not just possible but can even be effective if you have a good idea of the resources available and how to use them to push your brands forward.
Author Bio:
Sameer Mehta is a business leader with over 14 years of Marketing and Strategy experience. He enjoys writing, especially exploring the subjects of entrepreneurship and business, has done so for a range of publications. He is also the founder of Jewellerista, a website that showcases the latest jewellery trends and other articles related to fashion.