Many business owners are so focused on cutting costs that they lose sight of what it will mean for their business. If you don’t have any clients, it’s hard to grow or even stay in business. Here are five ways to cut your marketing costs without hurting the performance of your business.

Here are some wonderful ways to save money.

Minimize Your Waste

When you look closely at marketing programs, you might be surprised by how many of them have flaws that either directly waste money or let leads slip away. Before you cut anything, you should pay attention to what you are doing. Are there any projects that aren’t getting the results they were supposed to? You can fix them or throw them away.

Nothing can be linked to a rise in sales in the future? Unless you have a lot of extra cash, now is not the time to spend money on marketing projects that don’t bring in new leads or improve the ones you already have. Low-cost ideas could be simple things like pop-up displays or social media campaigns.

Marketing Plans: Make Fewer Mistakes

One way to put it is to ask people who know what they’re talking about what they think. Even though marketing will never be easy, it has changed a lot in the last few years. Customers and possible customers now have the upper hand, and they are looking for you on the internet. If you’re not connected to the internet, you’re not part of what’s going on.

Even though business owners who try to figure out marketing on their own deserve some respect, doing so wastes time and leads to mistakes that could have been avoided with a little more experience. You might not need an experienced marketer on your team, but if you don’t have one somewhere else, you’re wasting money.

Take Care of the Marketing You Already Have

People in different stages of the buying process are drawn to successful lead generation efforts. Some people are more likely to give their all than others. Some people want to talk to a seller right away, but others don’t.

Think about all the ways you’ve tried to get leads: search marketing, email campaigns, advertising, networking, trade shows, and so on. None of them works. Were all of the people who replied willingly to set up a 2-hour demo of your product? Not at all. But as long as you keep in touch with them, you can expect them to come back to you in the future.

If your company has a large number of inactive prospects in a database, it might be better to keep in touch with those people instead of spending money to find new ones. Also, keeping leads alive may be cheaper than getting them in the first place.

Use Outsourcing in Your Marketing Plans

A successful marketing campaign today needs skills in many different areas, some of which didn’t even exist ten years ago. Some examples are the design and execution of a website, keywords, pay-per-click advertising, prospect conversion optimization, lead nurturing, and online marketing.

If a small or medium-sized business wanted to hire people with all of this knowledge, it would cost more than they could afford or be willing to spend. But you can easily and cheaply get this information from a third-party group or organization of experts such as a UK SEO Agency.

These four tips should help you get back on track with your marketing. Do you have any more ideas that might help? If you have any, please share them in the comments.

Artificial intelligence has come leaps and bounds from a far-away pipe dream to a staple in millions of small-to-medium businesses across the globe, with large-scale international companies not going a day without it. As small business owners, AI may still seem like that distant possibility – but now, more than ever – it’s affordable, accessible, and necessary for small businesses to inject into their operations.

In today’s market, you don’t need a sufficient knowledge on artificial intelligence to realize the savings and growth potential of using AI for your business. And the worst mistake? Believing that AI is no more than just a few chatbots installed on a company’s website, or a few auto-generated images to upload to your Facebook page. AI is skyrocketing business growth, and it’s best not to get left behind.

So how are the small businesses of today leveraging AI in clever, intuitive ways? Let’s dive in.

1. Identify gaps in the market for new products (Dialog)

Small Marketing firm Dialog, founded by Mark Thompson, are using AI data collection tools from Tensor Flow (an AI software library) to gather data on hot products in their clients’s markets and collecting all of the conversations across the internet taking place about those products. This helps Dialog identify opportunities for their clients to innovate on their product lines, using Tensor Flow’s AI data harvesting tool to beat out the competition.

The tools are free, so Mark had no problem introducing this solution to his team and serving his clients with it.

Brands & companies in the coming decade will be able to seamlessly develop and launch products that truly resonate with their audience, because mass data collection takes the guesswork away from ‘what the customer wants’. Dialog are using these tools to serve their own marketing clients but consider what help this would be to large-scale commerce brands like Nike or Gucci.

2. Get help writing fantastic content (WPBeginner)

Syed Balkhi, founder of small online education business WPBeginner, has begun exploring artificial intelligence as a means of churning out high-quality, high-value content for his company website without the hassle of hiring external writers, editors and copywriters.

AI-generated copy has hardly reached terminal velocity yet: for most solutions available in this space, the tools can often result in hilariously poor and robotic outcomes, rendering the content near useless. But Syed’s team don’t use it for raw, unedited and perfect copy.

‘While it’s not at a stage where you can just plug in keywords and get a fully useful article, it has reached a point where it can assist your current writing efforts in powerful ways’ he told FastCompany in July. If your business lives & breathes online content in written form, it’s time to consider AI-generated copywriting software – just be aware of the current quality of the work (which is constantly improving!)

3. Take strain away from your team with Customer Support AI (OneIMS)

If your small business thrives on powerful and meaningful customer support, you should explore the possibility of implementing customer support AI into your operation. Particularly if you’re dealing with a large sum of clients or a product that requires a great deal of hand-holding (advertising campaigns, intricate software, marketing) it’s essential you make efforts to alleviate the stress on your support team, which may be just one person or a handful.

The mindset-shift small businesses need to make regarding their support is that not all customer touches, Q&A’s or queries need to be answered by a human. OneIMS, led by Solomon Thimothy, uses AI-generated responses to customer support questions to reduce the workload of their teams, so they can focus on the product, the queries that do require a human touch, and growth.

Larger Businesses leveraging AI to Stomp Out Competition

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The greatest superpower that small business owners have is great service. With incredible service comes repeat customers and referred customers who also become repeat customers!

By providing a delightful customer experience, people remember positive interactions with your small business and eventually return to your business again and again.

In this article, we will reveal a number of important ways to generate repeat customers, so you can start seeing familiar faces return as soon as next week.

Use personal forms of communication (as well as traditional)

These suggestions assume you are actively collecting emails & phone numbers to re-engage your customers with future updates, promotions & news about your business.

Email is still the preferred medium for customer communication. Functionally, it works great. You can let customers know about your most recent deals, promotions, and new products – but at the risk of being cold. You might be coming off disconnected and formal.

SMS-marketing, (also known as text marketing) can prove to be a powerhouse for customer engagement, assuming they have opted-in for it. With an open rate of nearly 99% SMS messaging puts your business message right where your customer is looking all the time – their phone.

Don’t forget to add personalization into your campaigns. You want your customers know they are thought about. It’s as simple as selecting the ‘First Name’ field into your outgoing messages and using their first name instead of just “Hey” or “Hello” “Hi”

. And can make an immediate good impression.

Remember the customer

You can personalize the experience for your customer simply by remembering small details about them. For example, if they mentioned they have children, or grandchildren – ask about how they are doing during their next visit. Are they dog lovers? Maybe ask them how their dog is doing. This is such a simple thing to do, but it makes a huge difference. Moments like these make customers want to return to your business.

Reach out to customers you haven’t heard from in a while

There are also plenty of customers who purchase from you once or twice (almost a repeat customer) then you never hear from them again. Life gets in the way! To re-capture these customers, find out who has gone quiet and reach out to them with a re-engagement offer. Send them a friendly email or text to remind them that you care and want to serve them more of what they came for in the first place.

Remember: You should never prioritize acquiring new customers over satisfying existing ones.

Why?

Because it can cost up to 5 times as much to acquire a new customer as it does to retain an existing one. Don’t assume that your existing customer base is already loyal to your brand and doesn’t need to be treated with same fantastic service they’ve come to know and love. No matter if they’re a brand new or long-term customer you need to give them a reason to come back

Customer churn is a silent killer of small businesses. (That is, how many customers use your business once and never return.) When you incentivize old customers to come back with great service, good offers and strong rewards for being repeat customers, you’ll unlock an immense force for business growth.

Respond fast!

Being there for a customer when they need you is imperative to whether or not they become a repeat buyer. 90% of customers rate an immediate response (30 minutes or less) as important or very important to their questions and inquiries. (per Hubspot).

Gone are the days of “Call us for more details.” Your customers will bombard you with questions and comments from a variety of channels nowadays. Phone, email, website forms & chat, social media platforms & more!

In order to achieve the illusion of an all-seeing, spotless customer experience, your staff need to be present on these platforms at all times. But don’t worry, that’s what Social Media Dashboards like Buffer and Agora Pulse are for. You can handle all communication & engagement throu...

The greatest superpower that small business owners have is great service. With incredible service comes repeat customers and referred customers who also become repeat customers!

By providing a delightful customer experience, people remember positive interactions with your small business and eventually return to your business again and again.

In this article, we will reveal a number of important ways to generate repeat customers, so you can start seeing familiar faces return as soon as next week.

Use personal forms of communication (as well as traditional)

These suggestions assume you are actively collecting emails & phone numbers to re-engage your customers with future updates, promotions & news about your business.

Email is still the preferred medium for customer communication. Functionally, it works great. You can let customers know about your most recent deals, promotions, and new products – but at the risk of being cold. You might be coming off disconnected and formal.

SMS-marketing, (also known as text marketing) can prove to be a powerhouse for customer engagement, assuming they have opted-in for it. With an open rate of nearly 99% SMS messaging puts your business message right where your customer is looking all the time – their phone.

Don’t forget to add personalization into your campaigns. You want your customers know they are thought about. It’s as simple as selecting the ‘First Name’ field into your outgoing messages and using their first name instead of just “Hey” or “Hello” “Hi”

. And can make an immediate good impression.

Remember the customer

You can personalize the experience for your customer simply by remembering small details about them. For example, if they mentioned they have children, or grandchildren – ask about how they are doing during their next visit. Are they dog lovers? Maybe ask them how their dog is doing. This is such a simple thing to do, but it makes a huge difference. Moments like these make customers want to return to your business.

Reach out to customers you haven’t heard from in a while

There are also plenty of customers who purchase from you once or twice (almost a repeat customer) then you never hear from them again. Life gets in the way! To re-capture these customers, find out who has gone quiet and reach out to them with a re-engagement offer. Send them a friendly email or text to remind them that you care and want to serve them more of what they came for in the first place.

Remember: You should never prioritize acquiring new customers over satisfying existing ones.

Why?

Because it can cost up to 5 times as much to acquire a new customer as it does to retain an existing one. Don’t assume that your existing customer base is already loyal to your brand and doesn’t need to be treated with same fantastic service they’ve come to know and love. No matter if they’re a brand new or long-term customer you need to give them a reason to come back

Customer churn is a silent killer of small businesses. (That is, how many customers use your business once and never return.) When you incentivize old customers to come back with great service, good offers and strong rewards for being repeat customers, you’ll unlock an immense force for business growth.

Respond fast!

Being there for a customer when they need you is imperative to whether or not they become a repeat buyer. 90% of customers rate an immediate response (30 minutes or less) as important or very important to their questions and inquiries. (per Hubspot).

Gone are the days of “Call us for more details.” Your customers will bombard you with questions and comments from a variety of channels nowadays. Phone, email, website forms & chat, social media platforms & more!

In order to achieve the illusion of an all-seeing, spotless customer experience, your staff need to be present on these platforms at all times. But don’t worry, that’s what Social Media Dashboards like Buffer and Agora Pulse are for. You can handle all communication & engagement throu...

As we close out 2021 and look ahead to the new year one thing that has become blatantly obvious is that – now more than ever content marketing should play an important part in every small business’s digital marketing strategy.

If you want to stay one step ahead of your competitors online than it’s crucial to create content that engages, educates and is relatable to your audience.

And now you can stand out from the crowd with these 7 out-of-the-box content marketing ideas, that you may not have considered.

Instagram Filters for User-Generated Content:

Instagram is one of the most popular social media channels available for digital marketing today. Over one billion users enjoy Instagram every single month, with the average daily use time sitting at around 30 mins per day.

Marketers love to target Instagram, as over 200 million users visit a business page every single day. Plus, 81% of users use the app to research various products and services prior to buying. Instagram stories are a popular content tool marketers use to promote businesses, products and services.

User-generated content is powerful, because people are more likely to trust real people.

92% of consumers will rely on referrals from others when deciding to purchase a product, and 79% will use user-generated content to sway their purchasing decisions. Instagram filters aren’t expensive to produce and offer a unique, interactive way for users to create their own content for your brand.

Guestographics:

Guestographics are guest infographics. There are both images and text in this piece, and it is published on or linked from multiple websites. It’s not unusual for brands to collaborate on guestographics for a specific use. Establishing stable connections and establishing brand awareness are both attainable through this method.

In addition to publishing an infographic on your website, you can create guest content that includes a link to it on another website using the guestographic concept.

Guestographics are powerful because you can use them to boost SEO using backlinks, build brand awareness and create new connections with other brands.

The best part about using guestographics is that they are free to create. You can use Canva to create a guestographic for your social media today or hire a graphic designer for a fully custom design.

Instructographics:

Instructographics are infographics that explain how to do something in an engaging manner. Instructographics are a great addition to your content strategy as they are easy to digest and showcase your product and how to use it effectively.

You are only limited by your own creativity when using instructographics for step-by-step instructions or other how-to guides.

The best thing about them is that they are free to create using online sites like Canva (or hiring a graphic designer) and record a better share rate than other forms of content.

Whiteboard Videos:

Drawing on a whiteboard can be an effective way to explain a point, process, or product visually attractively for artists, graphic designers, or people good with a marker.

You can use whiteboard videos for almost anything that can be illustrated. Whiteboard videos create a sense of curiosity as the viewer waits to see how the rest of the story unfolds. Plus, the illustrations are pretty entertaining to watch.

Creating whiteboard videos doesn’t take a special skillset, especially with whiteboard video making programs like Doodly or MySimpleShow. But just like giving a speech, you may need to practice prior to recording to ensure everything flows smoothly.

Carousel Posts:

Carousel posts involve posting multiple photos and videos into a singular post. These are super popular at the moment and record a higher engagement rate than static posts due to the fact the user has to swipe to see more information.

Carousel posts are an effective way to share information with your audience. Aim to include a call-to-action within your carousel post to improve its effectiveness.

Scree...

There are many tools in the marketing arsenal for business owners but a website is quite irreplaceable. This is especially due to the fact that the internet has become part of almost everything we do. A business cannot grow without communication and this is why there is branding, catch phrases and marketing. One of the best ways to connect with the online community is to take your business where they are and a website is a great option. Consumers want a place where they can get information about your business and get more details on your products and services. For this reason, you will need the following ingredients to make your website design one that consumers want to visit.

1. Brand Yourself

Branding starts and ends where professionalism starts and ends. You cannot be a professional business without creating a solid brand identity. Large companies have managed to create brands that are identified worldwide and the process is not different for smaller businesses. If you already have a website, you can have it developed to your specifications to incorporate your branding strategies in the new look. Branding works in a simple way, when consumers notice you have a strong identity that makes you appear professional they will want to be associated with the brand since they will have confidence in it. Think about it.

2. Be Transparent

When designing your website, think about what the consumer would want to get from you. One important thing that you should not fail to include in your plan is your contact information. Websites with contact details are viewed as being transparent and honest. Making it easy for people to contact you will earn you more than just trust, you will get more customers. You also need to be clear about what your business does and try to answer the consumers’ questions before they ask them.

3. Provide Easy Navigation

Users like to have everything easy including going through the websites. Navigation simplicity is an important factor in retaining visitors. You should ensure that the site map is easy to access and always update it when there is an addition or elimination of a page. An additional feature that you can have a search function that can be used by the visitors to find things they are interested in. Make sure that the pages are fast in loading because slow loading will only lead to the visitors leaving your site. This can be done through making the pages as simple as possible but with an elegant appearance.

4. Incorporate SEO

The essence of having a website is to increase your business’ visibility online and you need to ensure that your site is doing exactly what it is meant to do. Search engine optimization is the reason why some sites are placed at the top of search engine result pages and this is where you belong. Consider using page topics that will incorporate your keywords and key phrases for a better ranking by the major search engines. If you cannot handle the SEO, let a professional do it on your behalf.

5. Be Organized

Though not every one is organized, everyone would want to visit a website where everything is neatly arranged such that finding a specific piece of information is easy and fast. The best way to have an organized web design is to have main categories under which different smaller categories will fall. This will decongest the sitemap and make it easier for visitors to find what they are interested in. When a visitor is having a great experience, they will not leave immediately and will probably recommend the site to their near and dear consequently giving you a chance to get more customers.