The pandemic has affected the world in unimaginable ways. From massive death counts, economic downturns in every country and disrupted supply chains, it has created chaos in more ways than one. The coronavirus has left almost no aspect of our lives untouched. Even the biggest and most well-established businesses are reducing costs and laying off employees.
The objective is to limit the overheads during these uncertain and turbulent times. When it comes to cost reduction, most prominent and small companies cut their marketing budgets, as spending on this aspect during these troubled and challenging times seems foolish and futile.
But no business can afford to stay out of the public eye if they want to bounce back and start on the right foot once the pandemic has passed. They need to continue making some efforts to market their products and services and keep their brand fresh in the minds of their target audiences. Read on for tips to develop low budget marketing strategies during the pandemic.
Things to Focus On
You would need to approach marketing very differently from what you did in the past. Some things to focus on include:
- Reduce Unrequired Marketing Costs– Reduce the overall amount of resources & money needed to get in front of your target audience. The strategies or marketing ideas you use need to be either inexpensive or free and should drive direct results.
- Focus on building certainty– When there is a crisis, people crave some form of assurance the most. You can use varied types of marketing content to help your consumers feel more secure during the pandemic. While you establish your brand, also make sure that audiences are sure of what options you are offering them during these difficult times.
- Offer Value– The primary purpose of marketing is to ensure that people feel encouraged to take specific actions. The idea is to stay away from manipulative tactics and offer your customers some genuine value for money in your marketing initiatives.
Low-Budget Marketing Tips
Here are some low budget marketing strategies that will help ensure you can still achieve these objectives, and see results today without breaking the bank.
1. Analyse the performance of your past campaigns
This is one of the very first things you need to do while planning any new marketing campaigns during this time. Since you would have limited resources and money to work with, all your marketing campaigns during this time have to be focused; that’s the only way they would add some profitability through these difficult times. Revisit the marketing initiatives you have used in the past and which have worked well for you.
Use tools like Google Analytics etc. and then determine what your audiences are looking for. It’s best to stay away from paid search ads etc. that don’t convert. Once you get a good idea about what type of content works the best, channel your marketing efforts in that direction.
2. Use Email Marketing To your advantage
During these times, email marketing can prove to be one of the best ways to market to various audiences. You can send information about current offers or any information you want to convey to them. The idea is to ensure your marketing campaigns reach only qualified customers as that would mean you are making the best use of your marketing budget.
3. Pay-Per-Click Marketing
The coronavirus is compelling more people to stay indoors, and the best way to reach these audiences within a fixed budget is to use PPC marketing. Google Ads permit brands to connect with their targeted audiences with offers and direct messages. Optimise your ads in a way that they only reach all your qualified prospects. This is the way you can limit wasted ad spend.
4. SEO Marketing
This continues to be one of the most powerful ways to ensure your business stays well ahead of your competition. Increase organic traffic by using SEO marketing and build a robust online presence. SEO is a great way to reach wider audiences organically. This strategy has to be used in conjunction with content marketing as that will help you create relevant content around keywords that customers are using during online searches for your services and products.
It will help you achieve a higher ranking on Google, which can increase leads and sales. Keep in mind that SEO will not reap immediate results as it is a long-term strategy, but it will help you stay relevant through these times.
5. Remarketing On Google and Facebook
During the coronavirus, you need to keep a tight hold on your marketing budget and prioritise spending more on your remarketing campaigns. This is an excellent way to maintain engagement with people that visited your site but did not purchase from you. This strategy involves showing content on Facebook and Google at low costs, and you can use your marketing dollars optimally to drive a more significant number of sales to your site.
When you remind your existing and potential customers that you offer excellent services and products, it helps keep the information fresh in their minds, and they will head to your site when they want to purchase those products.
6. Local SEO
If you are a small business that targets local audiences, you will not benefit from a generic SEO strategy. You would need to adopt a more specialised approach which involves Local SEO techniques. That will help you connect with qualified leads located in your geographic area. While most people are staying at home due to the COVID-19 threat, many businesses with physical locations are still open.
If this is the case with you too, you can also include SEO strategies that will help drive traffic to your store/commercial setting. Some other things that you can do include planning webinars, using testimonials and reviews in all your marketing initiatives, creating YouTube videos and using social media to connect with your audiences.
The Right Approach
While there is very little you can do to change all the disruption that’s happening around, you can use these low budget marketing techniques to continue being before your audiences. Making an impact without using high-cost marketing techniques is all about being flexible and adopting and implementing marketing strategies that will show results on a modest budget.
All these strategies that we have talked about are actionable and will help you maintain your visibility in the market and keep your business stable. Continue engaging your audiences without trying to hard-sell your products or services, and you will find that you can maintain a connection with them even through the pandemic. Ultimately, when things even out, it will also help you increase your sales and get off to a quicker start.
Using these strategies in the right measure and right way is essential, and this is where you need to consult professionals with experience in the field. They would be able to tell you exactly which strategies would work and how to use them in the right measure for the best results.
For more information about how to reduce recruitment costs in our business, contact the experts at Benchmark Cost Solutions at this number – 02 9525 0777. If you prefer, write to us at this email address, and we will revert quickly.
Thanks for reading,
Benchmark Cost Solutions Team
02 9525 0777
