Whether you’re marketing for a new business, an old business, or even for a one-off event, it always pays to pay attention to your marketing dollars and to engage in types of marketing which are cost-effective for your budget. Achieving the maximum ROI for every campaign is of the utmost importance for most of us with limited budgets… and even for those of us with more to spend on a campaign. Considering the cost-benefit relationship can help us design leaner, more effective campaigns dollar-for-dollar.
Effective Blogging
If you’re trying to drive traffic to a blog or website as part of a marketing campaign, blogging is hands-down one of the best and cheapest ways to bump up your marketing ROI. It’s a commonly-applied principle that websites which post approximately 16 blogs every 30-day cycle get roughly 3.5 times more visitation than websites which post 4 times a month. And of course, the higher-quality the blog, the more likely it will gain organic and social traction. Usually, a web design firm can help connect businesses with skilled content writers.
High-quality blogs can cost anything from $15 to $50 to be professionally written. While that may seem like an unnecessary cost, it is important to know that high-performing, evergreen blog posts can pull in hundreds, sometimes thousands of visitors a month. And, that power to pull in visitors is magnified if marketers share blogs more than once across social media channels and spend nominal fees (as little as $5) to promote to social media audiences.
Use Mailing Lists
Mailing lists and newsletters are dramatically more powerful sources of visitors and potential clients than most social media and SEO-geared campaigns, in great part because they allow for specific targeting. The best mailing lists are built from opt-ins from already-interested individuals, and serve as a soft reminder about the brand, business, or product you’re marketing. Done well and consistently, these marketing campaigns serve to digitally ‘farm’ qualified leads from a group of potential consumers.
As a bonus, the first tip: blogging, can help grow your mailing list organically over time. Well-placed CTAs (Call to Actions) to join mailing lists or newsletters can ensure that every element of your marketing campaign is helping the other, increasing your probability of increasing your campaign’s ROI.
Increasing Visibility for Free
There are plenty of ways which any company can increase their visibility… for free! One of the best ways is to ensure that directory websites like Yelp, Foursquare, and Travelocity all have listings for the business you’re marketing for. These listings are absolutely free to create, pack a powerful SEO punch for the websites of those business, and can also collate reviews.
If you want to double-down, don’t stop at simply creating listings on these websites: but use them to solicit honest reviews past clients. Highly-reviewed and highly-rated locations are usually promoted to the tops of searches on directory websites like these, meaning that the business will more likely be recommended to others using these websites.
Using Coupons and Freebies
Almost nothing gains as much traffic among visitors and potential customers as coupons or freebies. If you want to get the attention of a large audience quickly, offering coupons, especially exclusive coupons, can generate a lot of free word-of-mouth publicity and help make a value proposal to new customers, which can make them more likely to take the plunge and make a transaction.
There’s a reason that “freemium” has become the new status quo for startup apps, websites, and services: it’s an easy, amazing, and efficient way to get users who might have shied away from even paying a rock-bottom price to begin doing business with a company. But the notion is catching on in other areas, too. Testiv began giving away some of their SAT testing products and grew their bottom line. Proctor and Gamble, Slurpee, and dozens of other major brands are all learning about how “free” products can actually net companies a wildly higher return of transactions.
The Bottom Line
Determining a marketing campaign’s ROI is always about following the numbers. But creating a knockout marketing campaign doesn’t have to be all about the math! It’s about correctly anticipating the needs and wants of your target market and simply giving them what they want, in the form of a great value proposition. Whether it’s a discount, freebie, excellent information in the form of a blog post, or even just making it easier for customers to find you there are absolutely low-cost options which can provide a powerful punch to your marketing.
