Six ways small businesses can save money on marketing in 2021
At the start of the year, no-one could foresee the effects of the pandemic on businesses globally.
It’s been a tumultuous year and here we are, well into Q4 of 2020. Every business owner’s focus is turning to planning for 2021.
In what is an extremely difficult time to plan long term, small businesses need to build flexibility and adaptability into their marketing plans.
It’s also the time for small businesses to think even more about how to squeeze the most out of their marketing budgets.
Here are some tips on how to optimise your spend next year.
This blog is part of my marketing on a budget series. Sign up to my newsletter to get the latest blog posts.
1. Review 2020 media spend and performance
2020 has been an unprecedented year economically and although there has been a distinct split in how businesses have fared due to the pandemic - e.g. booming healthcare and retail markets, falls in office real estate - spend on traditional media has taken a hit of 7.5% this year.
People have been spending more time indoors than ever before in modern times so it’s no surprise that traditional and out of doors media has suffered.
In 2021 it’s likely businesses will be spending more than ever before on digital advertising. It’s a good time to look at which channels you advertised on this year and understand the results of your investment. Think about which campaigns saw the most return. Take these learnings into account when putting together your 2021 marketing plan and budget.
2. Understand your customers’ behaviours and needs
When making budget decisions about marketing your small business, what data are you using to make judgements?
Even more so at a time of great unpredictability, effective decision making relies on reliable and relevant information.
Not only do you need to be digging into your analytics, sales and performance data, you need to understand what your customers are thinking. The first rule of marketing is remembering that you are not the customer. You may know your product or service inside out, but you aren’t your customer. You need to get first hand understanding of your market.
You can conduct informational interviews, focus groups and free surveys to do this. They don’t have to be too time consuming either. Work backwards and think about the questions you need answering first, then design your research around these questions.
By combining qualitative and quantitative research methods and understanding not only how your customers are behaving, but what they are thinking and feeling, you will be able to make informed decisions about what to prioritise in your marketing strategy and budget.
3. Continuously optimise paid search and social campaigns
Now is not the time to waste money on poorly run search and social campaigns. Every penny needs to be working harder to gain more return on investment for your small business.
For paid search, work with an expert to improve your bidding strategies. Closely monitor your CPCs (cost per click) and CPA (cost per acquisition). Refine your audience targeting: has it changed over the last few months due to coronavirus-induced shifts in the market? This will need to be reflected in campaigns - changing keywords, ad copy and landing page messaging.
Advertising on social media, for example Facebook Ads Manager, is one of the most effective ways to reach your target audience. However it is very easy to spend money for little return. When trying to make your budget go further, create a cohesive campaign plan and consider your objectives carefully. Watch campaign performance and cost per result closely. A/B test your advert copy and creative visuals and make tweaks to improve conversions. Don’t forget to make use of powerful features like lookalike audiences and techniques like remarketing.
4. Focus on improving your email marketing strategy
Email marketing continues to be one of the lowest cost ways for small businesses to reach their audience and with some considered planning you can make changes to get better results.
Start by cleansing your email lists to keep them healthy. Engaged email lists equal higher open rates and click through rates. Higher conversion rates send a positive signal to email providers (Gmail, Outlook etc) so you will gain a better domain reputation and retain good deliverability levels to your subscribers.
Build an automation program to send a confirmation email to all contacts who have not opened an email in the last two months. Then unsubscribe anyone who does not respond within 14 days. Do this every so often, depending on how many disengaged contacts you have on your lists.
Focus on creating higher quality emails - produce short content with a good balance of copy to imagery to drive more clicks to your call to action. Also make sure you’ve got positive opt-in confirmations from everyone on your list. Not only is this required - in most instances - under the GDPR/PECR regulations, it helps with engagement.
5. Automate marketing processes with better tools
Small businesses usually have a lot of individual marketing processes to contend with. One way to save time - and money - on marketing in 2021 is to bring systems and processes together and streamline your work.
Here are some of my favourite platforms which make life easier:
Zapier - link together thousands of apps, platforms and tools to make tasks easier. Its easy step-by-step task builder lets you
Trello helps you keep track of everything you and your team are working on in a Kanban layout. I use it for campaign planning, developing blog posts, project management and more
Buffer - One of the best low-cost social media management tools around allows you to execute your social strategy simply with scheduling and analytics
Google Workspace has everything you need to organise your documents, spreadsheets, meetings and more
IFTTT - A super simple platform, similar to Zapier, which helps you save time by connecting your apps and streamlining processes
More tools:
Hubspot is a highly recommended inbound marketing platform for small businesses
Canva has loads of integrations, including with email platform Mailchimp, Google Drive and Dropbox
6. Create a flexible and adaptable content strategy
Producing relevant, timely and engaging content is one of the most important but often time consuming tasks for a small business. Sometimes a lot of money is spent on creating content that can only be used once, or isn’t even measured for its effectiveness in meeting the original marketing goal.
That’s a quick way to waste money and not achieve the results you want. For small businesses to make the most of marketing budget, it’s key to take a structured yet flexible approach to planning your content.
I suggest starting by doing a content mapping or content pillar exercise.
Think about: What do you want your business to be known for? What value can you provide to your target audience?
Then come up with three or four core content themes related to your key offering that you can share useful information about (e.g. if you’re a mental health charity, you may have these themes: mindfulness tips, reducing work stress, professional resources)
These are your content pillars. For each content pillar or theme, come up with three to five ideas for content (video, blogs, social posts, white papers etc)
Then assess your core marketing goals, channels and how this content can be used at relevant stages of the marketing funnel. Aim to incorporate SEO techniques as well
Map out a rough timeline for the next 90 days. Think about how you will measure the success of the content
The goal is to produce several core pieces of content that can be adapted and repurposed across your core channels over time.
If you want my help developing a content plan, please do get in touch.
Final thoughts
There are lots of ways you can optimise your small business marketing budget for 2021. Hopefully I’ve given you some good starting points and ideas which you can apply to your business to maximise the return on your marketing spend.
Contact me
I am Maria Soleil, a triple award-winning marketer based in Kent, UK, with almost a decade of experience helping brands grow their presence and results online. Now, as Soleil Marketing, I work with small to medium sized businesses who value growing profit as much as they value creating impact.
Need marketing support? I can help with strategy, performance reviews, content, social media and more. Book a call with me or get in touch.
