The number one way to maximize your digital marketing budget is to minimize your digital marketing targets.
We no longer live in a world where marketers are required to keep their wallets open and fingers crossed in hopes of getting a message in front of the right person at the right time.
If you don't have a mainstream product like Coca-Cola (and a budget to match), you most likely can't afford to go as far and wide as possible in hopes of touching as many as can be touched. If you are looking to maximize your digital marketing budget, you must to narrow your field of focus.
- Do the math- Take the time to understand the mathematics of a perfect customer. What makes up the perfect customer? What’s the formula? Age, sex, income level, married or single, children, job function, affinities, hobbies etc. The more you know about the people best suited to consume your product/services, the less money you'll spend going after anyone that does not fit the formula.
- Find your Robert Frost moment- If you're in a competitive market (and who isn't) you typically travel the same roads frequented by your competitors, but sometimes, if you dig deep and really flex those marketing muscles, you can find that road less traveled. That road is called opportunity. In my over 25 years in the digital marketing space, I have yet to meet a business where that road could not be found, that shortcut or secret path that gets you there faster than everyone else.
Opportunities in the digital marketing space can be hard to come by, but other times it could be as simple as using data analysis tools like Google Trends to determine search phrase popularity. A recent example of this comes from a client of mine, a mid-sized law firm specializing in “driving under the influence” (DUI) cases. This law firm was paying a pretty hefty sum per click for the term, “DUI Attorney”. The space was very crowded and full of competitors, which pushed bids for the phrase up over $30 per click.
Their Robert Frost moment came when we discovered that if we swapped the term DUI for DWI (driving while intoxicated) and changed attorney to lawyer, the competition went down by 30% and searches went up by 80% and cost per click was 50% less.
- Make the man offer they can't refuse
Most often we see budget being squandered not in the act of being found, but being chosen. Improper and misaligned messaging is a huge problem. Many digital marketers are proficient in using tools like Facebook ad manager and Google ads. They can manage bids and set up a multitude of parameters to insure an ad is seen, but being found and being chosen, well those are different skill sets entirely.
Many marketers lack the persuasion skill set, the ability to make a connection from problem to solution, to speak to the pain, to sell. Sales skills are not common and many digital budgets suffer from improper connections, forcing advertisers to spend more, and enter the “numbers game”. Making sure your messages are meaningful to the needs of your potential clients and persuasive enough to showcase your true unique value is imperative to maximizing budgets and return.
If you really want to maximize your digital marketing budget, shift your thinking away from maximizing a budget and focus more on maximizing a return on marketing dollars. Don’t let budget limit your opportunity, let opportunity make your budget limitless.
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