5 Easy Methods of Reducing Marketing Costs Without Hurting Your Sales

The marketing and sales revenue of your business are highly correlated. But this doesn’t mean that a company with a higher marketing budget will generate more revenue. A whopping 30% of businesses accept defining their marketing budget to be their top challenge. So, how much should you spend on marketing your business? And how to reduce marketing costs?

According to SBA, you should spend 7-8% of your gross revenue on marketing if your company makes less than $5 million. If your company makes more than this, you can spend up to 12% on your marketing. But should you follow these numbers blindly?

Here are two scenarios to give you a better perspective.

• Let’s say that you get 400 new leads per month with a marketing spend of, say, $4000 and every 1 in 16 of these leads make a sale. So, your current marketing spend results in 25 sales per month generating, say, $50,000 in revenue.

• You, now, decide to double your marketing budget to $8,000. But, the new revenue generated is just $60,000. (not double) 

Looking at the new sales to marketing ratio, you have exhausted your current marketing techniques. Increasing your marketing budget any further won’t witness a similar increase in gross revenue.

Marketing is expensive and its results vary for different industries. In light of recent events, Google has cut its marketing budget by 50%. Sunder Pichai (CEO of Google & Alphabet) said:

“Just like the 2008 financial crisis, the entire global economy is hurting, and Google and Alphabet are not immune to the effects of this global pandemic. We exist in an ecosystem of partnerships and interconnected businesses, many of whom are feeling significant pain.”

This brings in the question of how to cut marketing costs without affecting your sales or revenue? In this article, I am going to list down 5 different methods of reducing marketing costs without severely impacting your business with comprehensive examples. 

Use Free Tools

Did you know that Buffer spends more than $3,000 just on marketing tools?

Now, $3,000 is a lot. So, the first point in how to cut marketing costs is to nullify this amount using free marketing software tools in your business.

There are dozens of marketing tools available for free. So, the first step in how to cut marketing costs is to use these tools for marketing activities such as keyword research, designing banner & social media posts, and more!

Identify the marketing channels that have decreased output. For instance, if your organic ranking and visibility are decreasing, your competitors must be aggressively doing SEO and SEM activities. 

Use free marketing tools like Google Keyword Planner & Ubersuggest to identify ranking pages of your competitors and find the right keywords to use in your blogs.

Use Organic Marketing

Organic Marketing, such as SEO, SMM, and Email Marketing, is a way of promoting your business to get leads naturally.

90% of online experiences start with a search, which results in around 3.5 billion+ Google searches per day.

As such, organic marketing should be your #1 channel among the methods of reducing marketing costs without impacting your sales!

Tip: If you depend mainly on paid marketing for new leads, don’t stop it right away! Organic Marketing takes time to show results. Make a gradual shift to organic marketing to cut marketing costs.

Write resourceful and keyword-optimized blogs. Send weekly or monthly newsletters to your email list. Approach reputed websites relevant to your business with hundreds of thousands of visitors for guest posting opportunities. Post on your social media channels frequently and regularly.

Repurposing Your Content

Have you heard of the marketing rule of 7?

Well, it says that a prospect should see, read, or hear your company’s message (blog, video, podcast, etc.) 7 times to make a buying decision. As such, how to reduce marketing costs when you have to deliver your message at least 7 times?

Well, one of the methods of reducing marketing costs that experts suggest is content repurposing.

Let’s say that you have invested resources - time and money to create a video. Some of the content repurposing options you can use, but not limited to, are:

• Clipping original video to create n short videos.
• Converting it into a podcast.
• Create a blog on that video and pitch it as a guest post or upload it as an onsite blog.
• Creating n social media copies for the same blog.
• Convert it to an eBook to share it in your newsletter. 

You now have 7-8 different forms of the same content for your audience on different platforms. Content repurposing is one of the proven methods of reducing marketing costs used by big brands as well as small businesses all over the world.

Segregate Your Budget Wisely

Every business has a marketing strategy. If you don’t have a strategy, you are probably wasting away your marketing budget.

According to CoSchedule,

Marketers with a well-documented strategy are 313% more likely to achieve their goals.

You, now, have a strategy in place. What channels do you use for marketing your business? 

In this step of how to reduce marketing costs, the idea is to rank different marketing channels based on their ROI in the previous 3 quarters. 

Once you have the list, start crossing the channels with least/ negligible ROIs from down the list.

Once you have crossed all the channels with zero chances of returns, even in the long run, you will get an optimized marketing budget for your business. This is one of the most effective methods of reducing marketing costs.

Focus on areas with maximum impact on your business. Eliminate marketing channels with minimum ROI. Avoid trying out new marketing channels when methods of reducing marketing costs.

Upsell to Your Existing Customers

It’s now common knowledge that it is easier to upsell to an existing customer than acquiring a new customer. Here are two stats by Fundera.

• 65% of a company’s business comes from existing customers.
• Customer acquisition costs 5 times more than customer retention.

Marketing has a crucial role to play in customer retention. When looking for how to reduce marketing costs, keep in mind not to cut heavily on strategies and channels you use for customer retention.

Share new case studies, eBooks, videos, etc. to keep your clients engaged with your business. If you are launching a new service, inform your consumers about it and offer them a loyalty discount if it suits your business model.

Experts also recommend performing quarterly reviews with your clients. This not only will help you, as a service provider, to understand your clients’ requirements in a better way but will also make your clients feel valued.

The idea of upselling to your existing customers is to increase the Customer Lifetime Value in your business.   

Final Words

Reducing marketing costs without hurting your business is crucial especially in these troubling times. So, what are you doing to balance marketing spend in your business? Let me know in the comments!